Chris Dixon, my colleague at a16z, summarized the idea in an essay titled, appropriately, “The next big thing will start out looking like a toy.” Disruptive technologies are dismissed as toys because when they are first launched they “undershoot” user needs. The first telephone could only carry voices a mile or two. The leading telco of the time, Western Union, passed on acquiring the phone because they didn’t see how it could possibly be useful to businesses and railroads—their primary customers. What they failed to anticipate was how rapidly telephone technology and infrastructure would
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