Niantic EC-1
Illustration by Nigel Sussman
Greg Kumparak published the first part of his planned four part EC-1 series on Niantic yesterday, focusing on the founding story of the AR/gaming unicorn from Keyhole and Google Earth to a complicated spinout from Alphabet. Lots of great nuggets on how companies get formed and built, but one I particularly enjoyed was this one:
Like most companies, Google doesn’t like when employees leave. Especially employees who ran key parts of the company for years. Leaving means competition. Leaving means potential opportunities lost.
John [Hanke, CEO of Niantic] eventually sat down with Larry Page to figure out what it’d take to keep him within Google . They talked about John’s interest in augmented reality. They talked about a book called Freedom
by David Suarez, which centers around an out-of-control AI that taps a network of real-world operatives to control the world (the earliest hints of Niantic’s first game, Ingress, already sneaking in here years before it’s made.)
John wanted to take his interest in AR and his background in maps and gaming and mash them all up and see what it could look like. Larry wanted it to happen within Google.
What I loved is that Eliot Peper wrote a piece for Extra Crunch just a few weeks ago about the importance of speculative fiction in the creation of startups, and also gave a guide on just what books he recommends to find your next startup.
Expect Part 2 of the Niantic EC-1 to drop early next week as we do a rolling release.
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Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch
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