L's Profile

Think there would be any interest in them creating supplementary titles for mobile devices that have console-game impact? E.g. mini-games or maintenance games that allow you to boost your level in the regular game? Or are the two gamer populations too separate for that to work?

Thanks Carl! If you foresee existential risk on those projects for the traditional management consulting firms, would you see it as at all valuable if they worked together to develop capabilities in these areas? If they were to share IP with Mck or Bain, would that present a more credible threat to future competitors vs. going solo? Any chance they bite?

Thanks Chris! How do you think about the changing views quality of release at release date? Before the internet, the logic was you had one release window, and there was no room for bugs in the final product. As internet speeds got faster, developers felt more confident in the ‘release early, patch often’ method. Then developers blurred the line between release further, allowing early access to Beta and Alpha stage of the game. Minecraft famously did this and essentially crowdsourced the debugging/development. Can large firms get in on this? It might have prevented things like the Mass Effect disaster.

Thanks Haley! Really interesting idea. I love the thought of solving the annoying empty seat problem. Question for me would be whether wealthy season ticket holders – the ones you reference as having the best yet often vacant seats – would tolerate an app pinging them to let them know they have 5 minutes to confirm they don’t want their seats sold. I feel like a lot of those folks are status conscious, and/or have relationships built with fellow ticket holders in adjacent seats; remains to be seen whether they’d be ok with those tickets being sold at flash sale prices.

Great post! One of the best crowdsourced moments I remember with Twitch was the Twitch Plays Pokemon series. Has collaborative gaming on that platform gotten any more traction since then? Do you see an opportunity there?

Amazing post, amazing promo video. Has there been any discussion to expanding the product in a more democratic way by allowing consumers to create their own content? Racers with an AR set could create custom courses for one another that would only require a large field rather than professional equipment and cameras. Racers could ‘ghost race’ against professionals on the best courses. Worldwide leaderboards could keep racers engaged long-term. I can’t wait.

Thanks Hans! There’s a lot of literature (read: argument) out there among pro gamers comparing Twitch with YouTube, but one distinct advantage of Twitch is in its relationship with licensing rights. To prevent pirated content, YouTube has a bunch of algorithms constantly looking for distinctive visual and audio signals that mark copyrighted video, and will send pre-emptive C&D letters if detected. However, this same technology has also been the cause of a lot of interrupted gaming streams and frustrated live-streamers, who have begun to transition out of the platform due to cumulative frustration. The fact that YouTube has a lot of content across a lot of different types of media to protect can actually be a disadvantage in terms of maintaining its relationships to its most important personalities.

Thanks Juan! When I interned at Spotify, the name of the game was content discovery – they believed if you were able to better predict and offer good suggestions to people who wanted new music, that would be enough to earn their loyalty. But without any user-side network effects keeping the relationship sticky, I find it hard to imagine that Spotify is going to be able to differentiate enough to keep their premium base. And although it does not have to be a winner-take-all market, as Zach mentions above they may face unsustainable pressure from bigger players with much deeper pockets.

Great post! Question for you – once VR technology becomes more ubiquitous, do you think movie theaters are destined for decline? It strikes me that the only difference then would be (maybe) audio quality (better), price (worse), and having to sit next to strangers (the worst).

Thanks Rain! Your points seem to call into question the viability of digital music streaming companies in general, and not just Spotify. How do you see the market evolving if not through Spotify’s model? Given that music streaming is here to stay, how could a company win in the market?

Great post! To what degree do you think these stores are just ready-made distribution centers for groceries? Are they a stop-gap to some near future where Amazon will be able to deliver all groceries to you (e.g. Amazon Fresh), or is their current incarnation here to stay?