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.

Successful innovations may end up reaching a mainstream audience—but they never start off that way. That’s the paradox of innovation: the “typical” people in your market are not the same ones you need to delight when bringing your idea to life.

Overall, the history of major technologies shows that the best new system is often not the system that happens to win out.

Yet the ideas that dominated dot-com thinking still exist. The tech industry still talks about winner-take-all markets and first mover advantages, when in practice, these are myths and in practical terms have been disproven. Look at the reality: there are weak advantages to being first, since the winning startup is usually a later entrant. And the