Guest: John Hanke, CEO of Niantic

When Pokémon Go launched, Niantic CEO John Hanke was enjoying a tranquil walk through a bamboo forest near Kyoto with his son. When he got back, it was all hands on deck: Building on a platform Niantic had developed for its previous game, Ingress, Pokémon Go was a runaway success story, earning $100 million dollars in revenue in its first week, and $1 billion in its first seven months. “I had a huge amount of anxiety that this is just too good to be true,” John recalls. “When are the wheels going to come off? What’s going to go wrong?”

In this episode, John and Joubin discuss San Francisco’s history, Noam Bardin, Google Street View, David Lawee, AR glasses, Field Trip and Ingress, Tsunekazu Ishihara, gaming outside, Gilman Louie, Frank Slootman, mellowing out, Thomas Kurian, Jay Chaudhry, commute burnout, daily yoga, Xerox PARC, Mark Zuckerberg, Apple Vision Pro, the history of gaming, and talking to computers.

Chapters:

(02:17) - Waze and Google Maps
(05:39) - John’s childhood heroes
(07:38) - Pokémon Go’s first week
(10:13) - Maps as a platform
(13:56) - Spinning Niantic off of Google
(17:36) - Hyperscaling
(19:05) - Finding Niantic’s mission
(22:45) - Startups and families
(24:15) - Adrenaline and gas
(30:17) - Drive without desperation
(34:42) - Negotiating with the Pokémon Company
(38:25) - Zero to a million
(41:28) - Relief and responsibility
(43:44) - Sustaining engagement
(47:18) - Enjoying the ride more
(50:57) - Rules for balance
(55:42) - Augmented reality and wearables
(01:01:38) - Social games
(01:04:14) - LLMs and the voice UI
(01:06:52) - Who Niantic is hiring

Links:

Connect with John

Connect with Joubin

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

#203 CEO Niantic, John Hanke: Buried Ships

Grit