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?

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