Nine lessons on how Niantic reached a $4B valuation
We’ve captured much of Niantic’s ongoing story in the first three parts of our EC-1, from its beginnings as an “entrepreneurial lab” within Google, to its spin-out as an independent company and the launch of Pokémon GO, to its ongoing focus on becoming a platform for others to build augmented reality products upon.
It’s not an origin story that serves as an easily replicable blueprint — but if we zoom out a bit, what’s to be learned? A few key themes stuck with me as I researched Niantic’s story so far. Some of them – like the challenges involved with moving millions of users around the real world – are unique to this new augmented reality that Niantic is helping to create. Others – like that scaling is damned hard – are well-understood startup norms, but interesting to see from the perspective of an experienced team dealing with a product launch that went from zero to 100 real quick.
- Build on top of what works best
- AR alone doesn’t make a hit game
- Ship the MVP, but have the roadmap ready
- Scaling is hard, even when you’ve done it before
- As your userbase grows, so do your responsibilities
- Visual designs can have growing pains too
- Social features can be useful for more than just growth
- Get users rolling as fast as possible
- Communication keeps users happy
The reading time for this article is 21 minutes (5,125 words).