Fortnite isn’t available on the App Store… but you can still play it on your phone today? With new services from Xbox, PlayStation, Amazon, and NVIDIA, as well as an M&A race to own the best gaming content, it’s clear that cloud gaming has finally arrived. Maneet Khaira (Co-Founder & CEO, Backbone) shares his perspective on how gameplay is evolving and why the next decade of gaming will be defined by the cloud.
After dominating mobile app charts for the past 10 years, Ilkka Paananen (Co-Founder & CEO, Supercell) and Sebastian Knutsson (Co-founder & former CCO, King) reflect on their learnings and share perspectives on operating in today's environment of remote work, Web3, and new form factors.
Games are the new shopping mall. It's where friends interact with one another, discussing all sorts of topics regardless of whether or not they relate to the game itself. Elizabeth Hamren (COO, Discord) and Nick Fajt (Co-Founder & CEO, Rec Room) discuss how games have evolved to fit this need, the differences between social gaming platforms and incumbent social media platforms, and what problems need to be addressed as gaming emerges as the future forum for socialization.
The past couple of years have shown both tremendous growth and highlighted tailwinds for blockchain gaming. Ryan Wyatt (CEO, Polygon Studios) and Jeff "Jiho" Zirlin (Co-Founder, Sky Mavis) join Dean Takahashi (Lead Writer, GamesBeat) to discuss the merits of blockchain gaming, how to operate in today's dynamic market, and their predictions for the future of this segment.
'Ready Player One' set the stage for the Metaverse in 2011 and we're now on the cusp of realizing that future… or has it already arrived? Daniel Sturman (CTO, Roblox) joins Caroline Hyde (Co-Host, Bloomberg TV) to discuss all things Metaverse; whether it already exists through Roblox today, what challenges lie ahead as it becomes more prevalent, and how it will augment future interactions.
At their best, games become a home for players to experience and express themselves for years on end. But what makes a great game great? Soner Aydemir (Co-Founder & CEO, Dream Games) and Jenova Chen (CEO, ThatGameCompany) discuss how to approach game design, find your target audience, and create memorable and enduring game experiences.
Index Partner Mike Volpi and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman talk robots and the apocalypse.
Index Partner Nina Achadijan interviews Ameet Bendov, the Co-Founder & CEO of Gong about his journey building the company and his advice for future entrepreneurs.
What are the practical aspects of AI? Index’s Erin Price-Wright speaks with Alexandr Wang, Founder of Scale AI, Anima Anandkumar, Director of ML Research, NVIDIA and Martin Chavez, Sixth Street Partners.
Today, we are privileged to have Cade Metz join us. Cade is a reporter at the New York Times, and covers artificial intelligence and machine learning, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality, and other emerging areas. Before the New York Times, he was a reporter at Wired. Cade has written what we think is one of the seminal books in AI called The Genius Makers, which is the story of the emergence of AI, from the 1950s to today. In the process of writing this book, he had conversations with so...
Mehran Sahami is a professor in the computer science department at Stanford University, and the Associate chair for education. Prior to this, he was a senior research scientist at Google. Adam Wenchel is the CEO at Arthur. He started his career at Darpa and worked at a number of tech companies. His last startup was acquired by Capital One where he built and led the AI team. This put him on a path to founding Arthur, which is a company that is a platform for monitoring AI performance. Forbes Tech...
“We're building robots that swim like fish and move like turtles. Robots that brush your hair, robots that pack your groceries, and can reason that you shouldn't put milk on top of lettuce. Robots that can recycle, robotic pills that enable incision free surgeries. In each of these examples, we have to think about the body of the robot, we have to think about the brain of the robot, and what is the interaction between the robot and the users.” - Daniela Rus Hear about the latest advances in robo...
“This is a really powerful conceptual shift from how we have been using computing technology for the past many decades.” - Kevin Scott, CTO, Microsoft “I’m excited to see 2022 become the year where NLP goes from being this incredibly promising glimpse of the future to a technology which we depend on for lots of things.” - Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI Learn about current advances and limitations of natural language processing from those working at the edge of the field today. Bryan Walsh , The editor ...
Guests: *Jason Citron*, Co-Founder & CEO, Discord *Danny Rimer*, Partner, Index Ventures With over 4 billion people on the internet, you can take just about any niche – weird black-and-white artwork, crochet cat dolls, candy commercials from the noughties – and it will be huge. In this conversation between Danny Rimer, senior partner at Index Ventures, and Jason Citron, co-founder and CEO of Discord, the pair discuss how the company became the ‘town square’ for creators and their fans to com...
Guests: *Sima Gandhi*, Co-Founder & CEO, Creative Juice *James Berdigans*, Co-Founder & CEO, Printify *Andrew Lipp*, Co-Founder & CEO, EQL *Harry Stebbings*, Founder, 20VC *Mark Goldberg*, Index Ventures (Moderator) While the tools for making and distributing media across the internet have been around for a while, the financial and digital infrastructure required to make money from online creativity is only just emerging. As the ‘creator-as-business’ model gains momentum, hear from s...
Guests: *Alex Zaccaria*, Co-Founder and CEO, Linktree *Jim Shepherd*, Head of Talent Partnerships, Snap *Alex Masmej*, Co-Founder & CEO, Showtime *Kudzi Chikumbu*, Director of Creator Community, TikTok *Georgia Stevenson*, Index Ventures (Moderator) The world is more connected than ever, enabling us to express ourselves in new and different ways. On the internet, we find belonging and we build communities. Here, we discuss how online identity has evolved over time, how different platforms wo...
Guests: *Phillip Wang*, Co-Founder & CEO of Gather,*Devin Finzer* Co-Founder & CEO of OpenSea, *Nick Fajt* Co-Founder & CEO of Rec Room and Sarah Cannon, Index Ventures. We're spending more time than ever interacting and transacting online. And in the future, we'll spend much of our lives—for work and for play—in immersive virtual environments and robust digital economies. This is the future of work and the future of entertainment, combining key gaming, crypto, and media. Sarah Canno...
In the realm of modern technology, it doesn’t get more exciting than self-driving vehicles. Aurora is the only successful independent company in this business. The team has remained focused on building the Aurora Driver, partnering with existing leaders (Toyota, Uber, Volvo, Paccar, and more) for the other pieces of the puzzle. Chris shares the advantages of relying on partners to bring that technology to market, noting “we’ll actually be able to build a better product and we’ll end up actually ...
Guests: The Chainsmokers’ *Alex Pall*, TikTok Creator, *Josh Richards*, YouTuber, *Shelby Church*, Twitch Streamer, *Youna aka Codemiko* and Index's *Rex Woodbury*. How can you ‘make it’ as a creator? In this conversation, hear from some of the pioneering artists in today’s digital economy about how they built up their audience from scratch, the roadblocks they encountered along the way, and the strategies they used to overcome them. Principal at Index Ventures Rex Woodbury begins by asking abou...
The Renaissance was humanity's zenith of creativity, art, and expression. Today, we're entering a second Renaissance—a digital Renaissance. Paula Findlen is the world's preeminent expert on the Renaissance. She speaks with Index partner Sarah Cannon on parallels between the Renaissance and our modern, technology-driven creator economy.
This week, Index partner Danny Rimer speaks to Farfetch founder José Neves. Farfetch is the world’s biggest online marketplace for independent fashion boutiques. Jose founded Farfetch in Porto and London in 2007 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2018. Danny & Jose discuss Farfetch and its global journey, what Formula 1 has in common with entrepreneurship, entering the US via a partnership and much more. Thank you for listening to DestinationUSA from Index Ventures. This is the las...
In this episode, Index’s VP Insights, Dominic Jacquesson speaks with Trustpilot founder, Peter Holten Mühlmann. Peter founded Trustpilot in Denmark in 2007 with a vision to create an independent currency of trust. Trustpilot hosts over 120 million consumer reviews and has 700 employees (23% of whom are in the US). Over the last thirteen years, Peter has led Trustpilot from a small Danish startup to an international, multi million-dollar company which just listed on the London Stock Exchange in M...
Pedro and Peter share their experiences of relocating to the US. They discuss the East vs West Coast, the impact on hiring senior leadership, relocating during COVID, family life and building US networks. Pedro founded Nexthink in 2004 in Lausanne (Switzerland) which is still the main engineering and product hub. He relocated to Boston in March 2020. Here's a case study of Nexthink's US expansion. Pete founded Codat in 2017 in London to connect the internal systems of small businesses to banks, ...
In this episode, Michelle, Christian and Joe talk marketing in the US. They cover branding as a universal human truth, the role of PR, changing tactics for the US market, breakthrough moments and more. Michelle is the founder of Peanut, which is the first social network for women to build strong ties from the moment they consider motherhood - enabling women at similar life stages to connect. Christian is the founder of Pitch, a software technology company started in January 2018 in Berlin, which...
How can European tech companies attract and hire the best US talent? Today we have two guests with two different perspectives; one a founder of a European startup who relocated to Silicon Valley, the other, a corporate executive who joined a European startup post Series B. Nicolas Dessaigne is co-founder and former CEO of Algolia, a Y-Combinator backed, AI search and discovery platform founded in Paris. Elizabeth Bramlage is an American executive who led US marketing for Swedish startup Klarna a...
How did Adyen achieve spectacular global success while anchored in Amsterdam? Index's Jan Hammer speaks to Adyen's founder Pieter van der Does to discuss what it takes for a European fintech to take on the US market. Adyen is a payments company that allows merchants to accept e-commerce, mobile, and point-of-sale payments. Pieter founded Adyen in 2006 and it listed on Euronext in 2018. Jan and Pieter talk about how being a second time founder nuanced Pieter’s approach, the journey from Boston to...
When and how should European enterprise software startups target the US? Today, Index’s VP Insights, Dominic Jacquesson speaks with Collibra founder, Felix Van de Maele about what it takes to succeed in the US. Collibra builds data intelligence cloud products and was founded in Brussels in 2008 by Felix and his co-founders. It has now become one of Europe's most successful software companies with over 700 employees globally. Half the workforce, and almost all the leadership is now in the US. Eng...
How did Spotify expand to the US and what did Daniel Ek learn along the way? Today, Index's Danny Rimer speaks with Daniel Ek, the CEO and founder of Spotify. Spotify is the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service with more than 350 million users and 155 million subscribers. Danny and Daniel talk about their 16-year history, the contrasting cultures of the US and Sweden, Spotify's delayed entry to the US, and Daniel's mindset and personal growth journey, alongside Spotify's US ...
Stay tuned for the launch of our first episode! In the meanwhile, to learn more about US expansion, check out our guide . It's the most extensive research conducted on this topic and includes analysis of 353 VC-backed startups that have expanded into the US over the last 10 years.
