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Niantic was just bought by scopely you were an angel investor in that right that was the Pokémon go folks I remember
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you showing me Pokémon go over a decade ago how many years were you in that deal
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oh my gosh as soon as they spun out an alphabet uh formed and spun them out as their own entity I realized it was my
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only opportunity to get in as early as possible and so I stalked the founder and sat at his door before Pokemon go
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they had this game called Ingress and I started playing it with my friends and I
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started noticing that my friends were doing some really unusual things they were like charting helicopters and like
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traveling all over the world to cast these invisible triangles over the Earth basically it's a game of who can cast
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the biggest triangle I was like why are these people spending so much time and not only that but why are they going
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around taking pictures of points of interest for Google like what is Google actually doing with this asset was my
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number one question so I realized that Ingress was part of a bigger mapping plan so this wasn't just a game Pokémon
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go was a joke and because they were part of Google I thought there was no chance
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and then I got a call one day and they said hey a friend of mine was like did you hear Niantic spun out I was like oh
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my gosh I don't know anyone at Google how do I reach John hanky and I realized I'd invested in this company called hint
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waterer and they were giving out game codes on the bottle cap and uh I was setting up her ticketing system one day
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and helping her out in her office and I saw all these tickets coming in with the
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subject line that said ingrish game code and I was like what is this all about and I just connected the dots and she
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introduced me to John hanky and then I went there with two Engineers because iig figured I got to show up with some
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value here we sat on the front stairs and basically sat there and and said please take our money he's like I don't
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need you I've got Nintendo I've got Google I've got and we're like no you really need us and he gave one of those
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Engineers a job offer pretty much that day he gave me a key card to the office so I can come and go from Niantic as I
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please which is pretty awesome