YouSaid · the spoken record

John Hanke

lines on the record: 89
first: 2016-09-19
most recent: 2016-09-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's possible. We had a good thing about starting with ingress and moving to Pokemon Go is that we built all of the infrastructure once and we learned what we did wrong and we actually rebuilt all of it for Pokemon Go. So Ingress really very much enabled Pokemon Go in that sense and the technology was robust.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If I did, it was in some sort of dream state where I woke up. It was, yeah, it was well beyond what we had planned in our optimistic forecast. I think it would have been irrational and irresponsible of us to sort of predict that it would get picked up the way that it did. It's just one of those things that it spread culturally. And thankfully, Google was there to work with us on the server side.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I mean, the Pokemon Go comes out. You certainly imagine had some inkling that people might like it, but the Pokemon Go, but you can't imagine the types of downloads that you got in the initial interest.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All of the paperwork negotiated. That closed in October of last year. And we landed a good portion of the team came with us. Some people decided to stay at Google, then started hiring, building up the team a bit, continuing to work on ingress and Pokemon Go and basically just kind of getting ready for launch through the end of 2015 and into 2016. We're kind of putting the finishing touches on the product and then rolled it out in early July.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the spinout didn't happen just like that, unfortunately. It was about a nine month process. But once we got all the paper, you know.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, since then, Ulsa Bluey, also as a small investment, but the big investors are Pokemon and Nintendo. And then we have a couple of angels who came in.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While we had set it up with the support of Larry as a three-year project with a one-year extension. And so we essentially had hit the end of that and we were at the point of deciding what to do next. In the beginning, you know, we had contemplated well, at the end, it falls into some part of Google, or it could spin out. And it didn't really seem to make sense to fold it into other worlds. Android would have been the obvious place because Android is mobile, but Android is also Android, and we're cross-platform and something different. So the spinout option seemed interesting, and we explored potential outside investors. And through the Pokemon Company, talked to them and Nintendo, and they were very interested in kind of supporting it and kind of being a closer partner through investing. So it's just.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is a man who's older than I am, right? But he's a gamer, and he just got it. He loved it. He was playing every day. And a number of other people in the Pokemon Company. Had been playing ingress. When we pitched Ingress Meets Pokemon as a project, they had essentially already. And the conclusion that, yeah, it would be a good. Were you”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We went through Tatsu, who was in touch with them, and one of the other members of my team, one of our designers, Masala Kawashima, reached out and said, Ingress, we've been working on. It's out there, check it out. We have this idea about bringing that together with Pokemon. And they were interested enough to have us meet with them. As it turns out, Google and Pokemon companies share office space in Rapongi Hills in Tokyo in the same building. So it was really, I flew over. We kind of went a few floors over. Down from the Google Office to the Pokemon Company office and showed it to them. And by the time we had that conversation, Mr. Ishihara, who's CEO of the Pokemon Company, was already a level 11 ingress player. His wife was even higher level ingress player than he was.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But that fiction translates perfectly into the kind of augmented reality real world game that we do. Through your device, your phone today, maybe you'll be some kind of glasses in the future, you're seeing this fantastical world overlaid on the real one. And you see the Pokemon and you can capture them. So it's really exactly what's depicted in the story of Pokemon. So we felt like it was a perfect match. And around the same time, one of the engineers on the MAPS team, Tatsu Namura, who was on stage with me at Apple last week, had done an April Fool's joke with a Pokemon company to mash up Pokemon on top of Google Maps. And that was, we were like, wow, okay, we're one step away from these guys. We can go talk to the Pokemon Company and sort of pitch them this idea. And we did, and they liked it, and we started working on the project.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's uniquely well suited to the kind of game that we're doing. If you think about the lore of Pokemon, it's about the trainer, and this is depicted in the animation series and in the video. The trainer goes out into the woods, goes out into the world, and searches for Pokemon. So it really is a It's an augmented reality game created originally as a video game.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It did. So Ingress was out, and Ingress's about to hit his four year anniversary. It's still growing. It's doing great. We were looking for the next project. Our goal has always been to create this platform for real-world games and have lots of stuff get built on top of it. So we were thinking about, well, what's next? What's going to introduce a wider set of people to this kind of technology? And Pokemon was something that we were talking about internally. It's obviously hugely beloved and popular gaming. Oh, why Pokemon?”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The story of how it went from being, or didn't go from being ingress, but how you went as a company from ingress to Pokemon Go is kind of interesting. I assume you were looking for a way to take at mass market, but Pokemon started out as April Fool's joke, right?”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We deliberately said we're not going to try to create something that's super mass market. We wanted to create something that was more of a targeted at gamers because we felt like we could make something that as early adopters that they would appreciate and use even if it wasn't perfect, even if the technology wasn't perfect. So it was kind of a deliberate choice to really make a game for gamers. I was a gamer. I didn't have a problem with that. And it was the early exploration of what it would mean to build a game like this. We build it around data that we actually, some of which came from field trips. So historical markers and public art are the places that are the key points of interest that you interact with in ingress and in Pokemon Go. So these things are all. Kind of built on one another. Filtrate came up first and then ingress”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I Yeah, it was about, well, it is about. It's still around. And I love the app. It tells you about history and art and architecture and things like that around you. Ingress was a sci-fi game. It was our first cut at doing a location real world type of game.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ingress is kind of, for those who haven't heard of it, while it's the core of kind of what became Pokemon, it's kind of a nerdier game. It was not a mass hit. What do you think was it about Ingress that made it kind of a cult thing versus...”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I had planned just, you know, I created my resignation letter and sent it to Eric. And Larry just explained that it was time for me to go do something new. And the company is trying to create opportunities for ideas to be explored within the company. And so they created this kind of special thing so that we could basically run like a startup about be inside of Google. It was very, very nice and supportive of Google to do that. And was a fantastic platform for us to try out some of these ideas. It gave us access to technology and people. So it's a great way to get started. And we did field trip and ingress both within Google.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I knew that because games were the things that got me into programming and I didn't want to take that away from him, but I also wanted him to do stuff outside and sort of led me to think, well, maybe you could combine. Games with outdoor play and exploration.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You hit on it. I mean, some of it was personal. I had been in this job for seven years. We came in as a 30 person startup and at the end of it we were thousands of people in this massive organization and Google itself had matured and I was a middle manager. I was between Larry and Sergei and Eric and the uppermost tier of Google and all the employees doing the work and I kind of wanted to go back and be closer to building something and to go back to that creative fulfillment that I found as a kid just typing away on personal computer making programs the idea of actually making something new. And this idea had been kind of germinating of building a game on top of maps that could lead you around outside and that would combine with walking and exploring and exercising. That's kind of led in that direction by everyday struggling with my oldest son who coincidentally just went away to college but he was a few years younger then and the screen time and games being so compelling and”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let's talk about how you got. You were at Google doing these maps. What caused you to do this? I mean, I know it happens to a lot of Google executives. They want to do other things. You're an entrepreneur. You're in the giant Google, and it had grown enormously in the time you were there to a relatively small company, to one that was sort of this giant. What got you to do this within Google First and then moving it out?”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it does get down to that panopticon kind of, you know, you have these multitudes of perspectives being synthesized into this global street level representation of the world that would be updated pretty regularly. So it's kind of an extrapolation forward of the kinds of things we did, but whenever you have, if you get down to the level of having drones sort of collect that at interior of shopping malls or at the very close street level, the fidelity of that is going to be, I think, amazing if it happens. Obviously, there are lots of regulatory and other things that would have to be overcome, but technically you could do it. And I guess that means at some point probably it will be done.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, for scientists too, it was this thing where to have access to overhead imagery, it was an expensive and difficult and technically challenging process. So a lot of scientists who had data that they wanted to compare to satellite imagery didn't really have the technical or financial means to do that. So when Google Earth became widely available for basically free with this high resolution imagery of the whole world, all of a sudden all these scientists who had ideas of ways to visualize data and interact with it, they had this really awesome free tool. So it ended up being a consumer thing but was used for very interesting purposes by many scientists.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have been created, like, and you were actually, and then another one was where deforestation actually happened versus where they thought it happened. It was kind of an interesting, like you were staring to people to really see the world versus how they thought it was, which is interesting.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, because you were showing how they were getting their ivory, how they were being poached. But one of the interesting things is there was anecdotal discussion of how it was happening, and then Google Maps showed how it actually was happening, which was in, because you could see the pathways and where they were, the poachers. And then the same thing with trash on the ocean. You also showed me there was. These big, I'll never forget it, it was these big bunches of plastic bottles”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Started at Stanford, and then Google took it up, and Sebastian Throne and Luke Vincent and others headed up that program and scaled it up around the world.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, going from EarthView down to the street level view, street view was another project where there were hundreds of college projects.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Many, I mean, you know, MapQuest was what had existed before, so with Google Earth and with Google Maps, we're trying to do a number of things. One is cover the world with imagery. So you could actually see what places look like. You could see what Yosemite or any place in the world looked like, the far corners of Africa. So there were technical challenges and logistical and business challenges just to collecting all of that overhead imagery. We worked with satellite partners. We ultimately put together our own fleet of aircraft internally to take very, very high resolution images. Then went into 3D construction of the actual building geometry. So now whenever Apple has the same capability now, if you tilt and look at San Francisco, New York, you actually see all the structures.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was kind of hoping that you could combine it with a walking type of experience that would leave you feeling kind of”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, for me, it was this linear thing where I'd worked on one of these early MMOs, massively multiplayer people playing together, competing, collaborating, and then I worked on maps. And Ingress, which was the precursor to Pokemon Go, was really just one plus the other. It was an MMO plus Geo maps. You put it together and Ingress comes out. And I loved both of those things. And I was also, I don't know, I was into this idea of games outside, you know. As much as I enjoyed making games, I also didn't really like that feeling that you get after you've been sitting around playing a game for two or three hours. It feels exactly like you just ate a whole bag of potato chips.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the first internet massively multiplayer online 3D games. And that has a lot to do with where we ended up with Ingress and Pokemon Go.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, way back. But to me, it was this magical thing that you could put commands into and it would do stuff. You could actually make things just by thinking it and typing into the computer. And yeah, there were cassette tapes which would lose your program at very inopporteur times. And I did that and then kind of came back to technology a few years later and helped to start a company that made one of the early MMOs.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And obviously, Niantic was built, the gaming company around maps, but you've been into games a lot longer than that. You wrote games for computers using cassette tapes, were taking you back to when you were a kid.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things yet, but go ahead. We didn't know if it was a bubble or if it was real. But in the course of talking to them, they actually showed us their financials, which were jaw dropping. I mean, I'd never seen a private company doing so well. And Larry and Sergei and Eric convinced us that they were very, very passionate about this idea of maps being a way to find information and being this really important thing for Google.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we had a series B that would be 10 million, which seemed like a huge amount of capital at the time. And kind of out of the blue, Google called us up. We were actually located just a few blocks away, and Megan was the first person that I talked to over there. And she said, well, we're really interested in what you're doing. Why don't you come by and talk to us? And two meetings later, they made an offer to buy us. And we did debate it because Google is a big mystery then. This was pre-IPO, Google, and we heard rumors of strange things happening there, getting massages and lavish buffets of food. All true. We didn't know if it was going to last. You haven't gotten to the string.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know We had gone through, if you remember the timeframe from 2000 to 2004, that was bad. 9 11 happened, you know, the economy tanked, venture capital kind of deserted the valley. And we had lived through this pretty tough time and made it through the other side and the company was turning profitable. We actually had a 2004-3 term sheets from VCs to do our Series B and keep growing it. And that seemed like a...”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They did, yeah. That was the thing that I think probably ultimately brought us the attention of Google, the television networks picked it up, and they've been able to do kind of similar things with a lot of pre-production and a lot of work, but with Keyhole, they could just sort of throw it up and somebody could drive it. There's a guy at CNN named Miles O'Brien who became, I think, sort of mildly addicted to it. So he sort of worked it into every single broadcast. Why?”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was early. Yeah. I love maps. I grew up in a small town reading National Geographic and really pulling the maps out. And I just, I love maps. I like travel. I like this whole idea of virtual travel. So it was a dream kind of date for me to connect with the other founders and start it up. It was kind of a mix between a video game and something that was useful. So it had that fun factor of flying in and it's kind of jaw dropping as you zoom in. But you could use it to do practical stuff, like look for the hotel you want to stay in if you're going on vacation or exploring a hike that you want to take and you can see it in 3D. So it has utility too.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pretty early on, we started the company with some folks who came out of Silicon Graphics where they had worked on high-end visualization of satellite imagery for flight simulators and really expensive government stuff. But it was right around the time when 3D was coming out of SGI in the domain of supercomputers to the consumer space. So companies like 3D, FX, and NVIDIA, like the early consumer 3D stuff was coming out, which meant you could do that type of visualization, the thing that you see in Google Maps and Google Earth today back then. It was just them becoming possible on normal PCs that people could own, and we had the idea to build this kind of super version of MapQuest.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which made the keyhole earth viewer, which was acquired by Google in 2004. And then we came in and turned that into Google Earth and launched Google Maps and worked on local search and all the sort of related things.”
2016-09-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: John Hanke, CEO, Niantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT