Just as trying to think up startup ideas tends to produce bad ones, working on things that could be dismissed as "toys" often produces good ones. When something is described as a toy, that means it has everything an idea needs except being important. It's cool; users love it; it just doesn't matter. But if you're living in the future and you build ... See more

In a 2010 essay, Chris Dixon wrote, "The next big thing will start out looking like a toy." Provocative. What he meant was that new technologies are often dismissed as toys because they undershoot user needs, and that that ones that make it out of toy phase and into the zeitgeist do so because they ride external forces.