Thank you Pokemon Go, Thank you Niantic!
Pokemon Go, the mobile version of the ultra-popular two-decade spanning Nintendo franchise is in only a few days easily beaten everyone's wildest expectation and has developed into a full blown global craze.
It is now the most downloaded app in it’s first week ever.
For me personally this is truly wonderful news as it validates impressively what I wanted to achieve with my startup; although my version in not that successful… just yet.
When I first began creating tenqyu, I made this little explainer video to frame for myself what I wanted to achieve and find a way to “easily” communicate it.
Little did I know, nobody got the point. For the past years, I worked har to spread the vision about mobile urban engagement. going for every speaking opportunity that might arise.
But what you have done for me Niantic is officially off the charts! And I want to thank you for this.
For an entrepreneur, one might have the greatest idea’s that are visionary way beyond it’s time. When everybody laughs at you, ridicules you, and rejects you. Because you can not effectively explain it so nobody get’s it.
I pulled through. Day after day, week after week, year after year.
You meet up ineffectively with VC’s, large Retail Mall Operators, SME’s. Pitching your products, pitching your ideas. You end up getting a download here and there. But your brand is nothing compared to Pokemon.
I feel validated. And that makes me happy.
A couple of months ago, I was pitching at a co-founderslab meetup. Who was everyone flocking to? Not me, it was the VR guys that got all the fame.
VR is a nightmare to me. I believe in real-live experiences. The smells, the sounds, the tangible feeling of objects. The warm air that breezes through your clothes. The feeling of ocean waves on your toes. The straylight in the leaves of a tree.
Despite it’s connectedness, VR feels to me like a lonely and fake experience.
Location-based AR is a real experience. It brings people together. It brings people outside to experience the environment they live in.
There are even pub-crawls in Hawaii. (http://imgur.com/gallery/T9JiaNl)
Wonderfully crazy times we live in.
The era of location-based augmented reality has begun!
Of course I am not delusional. Tenqyu is by far not where Niantic ( a former Google company) is. But the success of Pokemon Go is liberating me from a lot of doubts. And makes explaining my “great urban vision” a whole lot easier.
