Company profile · 4 min read
Tiny: a collaborative ERP foundation for factories
Tiny is building a factory ERP that begins with collaborative quotation workflows and extends toward procurement, production and agent-assisted operations.
Cofounder of Lazyweb (a16z Speedrun). Previously grew subscriptions and built native ads at Duolingo. Writes First1000 (90,000+ subscribers).
Published · Updated
Tiny is building an ERP for factories that still run their operations through spreadsheets, disconnected tools and institutional memory. Its wedge is the beginning of the order lifecycle: a collaborative quotation workflow that can become the shared object graph for procurement, production and later agent automation.
What it does
The YC launch describes a factory platform for tracking a manufactured item across departments. Tiny starts with quotation: sales and engineering teams respond to customer inquiries using a lightweight CRM, item library and workflow engine. The launch says the foundation includes real-time computations, interactive audit logs, durable workflow execution and collaborative editing, with procurement and production modules planned next.
The buyer is a factory that cannot justify a million-dollar SAP implementation but has outgrown spreadsheets and manual re-entry. Tiny says it is already working with factories in Indonesia, Vietnam and India, initially around automotive and electronics suppliers. That is company-reported customer context. The current homepage was a minimal public surface in the checked packet and did not publish pricing.
Why I’d look closer
The advantage is starting with a high-frequency commercial object rather than attempting to replace every ERP function on day one. A quote links customer demand to the item, price, workflow and future order record. Founder context supports the systems ambition: YC describes Edward Zhang as having scaled Apple’s Services API gateway and previously building at Zenefits and Addepar; the launch names Louis as a former BitGo design leader.
The tradeoff is migration and operational depth. A factory needs correct units, revisions, lead times, approvals, inventory and customer-specific terms; a pleasant collaborative UI cannot hide a missing manufacturing model. The company’s future agent advantage also depends on durable, trustworthy data underneath.
What I’d ask
Which factory processes are live beyond quotations? How are revisions, customer-specific prices, units and approvals represented? Can teams export the object graph and audit history? What happens when a quote becomes a purchase order, a supplier change or a production exception? Which existing systems does Tiny replace, and which does it sit beside?
My editorial take
Shortlist Tiny if spreadsheet fragmentation is blocking quote speed and visibility across the factory. Start with one product family and make the quote-to-order handoff measurable before adopting procurement or production modules. The company’s durable workflow foundation is the interesting bet; the risk is asking a new ERP to carry manufacturing complexity before the basics are proven.
Quick facts
| Field | Sourced detail |
|---|---|
| Product | Collaborative factory ERP beginning with quotation workflows |
| Buyer | Small and mid-sized factories, initially automotive and electronics suppliers |
| Current wedge | Quotation, lightweight CRM, item library and workflow engine |
| Pricing | Not published in the checked pages |
| Main question | Can the quote object become a trustworthy foundation for the factory’s next workflows? |
Sources checked
| Source | Checked |
|---|---|
| YC company profile | 2026-09-19 |
| Tiny homepage | 2026-09-19 |
| Tiny YC launch | 2026-09-19 |
Cohort context
Tiny is listed in Fall 2024. In our 2026-09-18 directory snapshot, 57 of 94 listed companies in that cohort have YC’s primary industry label B2B (60.6%). This is a current-directory comparison, not an original intake count or a performance ranking. Nine-cohort dataset.
Public website snapshot
Observed 2026-09-19T16:14:49.445Z in raw homepage HTML. This records visible metadata and advertised links, not agent execution or product quality.
| Signal | Homepage observation |
|---|---|
| Product description metadata | Not observed in this response |
| Canonical link | Not observed in this response |
| H1 or H2 heading | Not observed in this response |
| Typed structured data | Not observed in this response |
| Docs/developer link | Not observed in this response |
| Pricing link | Not observed in this response |
| llms.txt link | Not observed in this response |
| Markdown alternate | Not observed in this response |
Public observations · Collection method. Missing links here do not establish that a capability or file is absent elsewhere.
About the author
Cofounder of Lazyweb (a16z Speedrun). Previously grew subscriptions and built native ads at Duolingo. Writes First1000 (90,000+ subscribers).
I cofound Lazyweb and publish Mudpie. This is an owner-written publication, not an independent testing organization. Research notes distinguish observations, sourced reporting and editorial judgment.
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