Max Child: Reinventing Gaming for the AI Era

In this episode of Generative Now, Lightspeed Partner and host Michael Mignano sits down with Max Child, CEO and Co-Founder of Volley. Volley led the charge of voice controlled gaming that uses Alexa as a platform. Max gives an inside look into what it was like to be a platform pioneer, and all the steps along the way. Episode Chapters (00:00) - Intro  (05:11) - Lessons from The Harvard Crimson (07:14) - How a failed dating app launched Max’s coding career (11:47) - From Infatuation restaurant critic to iOS developer (19:30) - The birth of chat-based games (21:17) - Chatbots: 2015 vs. 2023 (25:34) - Amazon Echo and Volley's breakthrough (28:15) - The trouble with being first to market (34:00) - Expanding from little speakers to big screens (38:57) - Voice AI stack enables natural communication for non-gamers (41:39) - Why isn’t Siri as good as ChatGPT? (46:13) - Why generative AI is a game-changer for Volley (58:34) - How generative AI has infected Volley’s strategy (01:02:44) - The second annual Cerebral Valley (01:07:58) - Is Volley hiring? Stay in touch: www.lsvp.com X: https://twitter.com/lightspeedvp LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lightspeed-venture-partners/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lightspeedventurepartners/ Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: generativenow.co Email: [email protected] The content here does not constitute tax, legal, business or investment advice or an offer to provide such advice, should not be construed as advocating the purchase or sale of any security or investment or a recommendation of any company, and is not an offer, or solicitation of an offer, for the purchase or sale of any security or investment product. For more details please see lsvp.com/legal.