The Night Pokemon Go Took Over The Suburbs & The Police Came

I started writing this at 1:40am on Friday night in the suburbs of Buffalo, NY. My brother and I were just pulled up on by State Troopers in a church parking lot for being there late. We stopped by this parking lot on our way home. This was no ordinary parking lot though. This parking lot contained a Pokemon gym.  The officer came up to us and asked for identification. We gave him our driver's license and he ask what are you doing here this late. I replied: "Officer, do you know what Augmented Reality is?". He gave me a strange look and said "nope". Fast forward a few minutes later to after my brief lesson on Augmented Reality and the new game Pokemon Go, he told us to have a nice night and left.

Prior to this encounter with the law enforcement my brother and I were outside a local Chili's restaurant, another Pokemon Go gym, when three cars pulled up simultaneously. One guy got out and screamed, there is a Squirtle around here. While he began searching for the elusive rare Pokemon by walking around the parking lot, the others who were still in their cars, began attacking the "Big Red Chili Pepper" gym. Within two minutes the gym changed from Yellow to Red (two of the teams you can join in the game) as it was overtaken by a new champion. Five minutes later, they left. If your not on the move in Pokemon Go then your not really playing Pokemon Go. 

Even earlier in the evening, down the street, a different car pulled into the United States Post Office to capture another Pokemon gym. They saw our phones out, we saw their phones out and so said we said Hello to each other. It turns out that they were actually some old friends of my brothers through a friend of a friend. They exchanged numbers and agreed to re-connect again soon. Pokemon Go re-connected old friends on a sidewalk outside a United States Post Office. 

Now since Friday at 1:40am when I was explaining to a State Trooper what Augmented Reality is, I know similar stories have been told thousands of times as similar situations unfolded across the world. I am sure you have heard by now that Pokemon Go is a new augmented reality app that makes you and your phone (using it's built in GPS) the main character as you walk around the real world to find and capture Pokemon. It is not the first augmented reality game but it is certainly now the most popular.

It's truly amazing just how fast this game has gone viral considering not once inside the game is there a prompt to invite a friend or get some free game items for sharing. The virality of Pokemon Go has been almost all organically social and word of mouth. 

Since the mid 2000's a new world of tablets, iPhones, improved gaming systems, and more have slowly been keeping us in our routines. I love that this game get's people back outside, connecting with others on the street, and exploring the parts of the world their normal daily routines ignore. Yes, Pokemon Go could improve the whole head down toward the ground like zombies staring at our phone thing, but we will get there soon enough with improved technology. I'm looking at you Oculus, Samsung Gear VR, and Microsoft HoloLens. 

I wanted to share this story and experience as it felt truly unique to me. That night in the suburbs, people were out and about exploring the world instead of sitting inside somewhere. There was an energy in the air that night in the suburbs. An energy that you can easily take for granted living in a big city that never sleeps like New York. It was refreshing, light hearted, and fun. So before others try to ruin the fun, get out there and catch some Pokemon. If you can, catch them all, and while your at it remember to pick your head up from time to time to say Hi the other people around you. 

2016 Startup Funding Trends With Adeo Ressi

Adeo Ressi at Valley in Berlin 2016

In 2015 it was all the rage to be a "unicorn", a startup company with a billion dollar valuation. Since then the supposed "startup and tech bubble" has popped and the gold rush is over. But what is really happening with the markets? 

Alex Konrad recently gave us some insight on Ambition Today and now today we have a more in-depth explanation of what is happening from Adeo Ressi, the founder of the Founder Institute. Last month Adeo was in Germany for the "Valley in Berlin Summit" and keynoted a talk around the 2016 Startup Funding Trends we are currently seeing. If you are thinking about fundraising, have a startup, or plan on starting your own company you are going to want to watch the keynote below. 

Watch The World In 2016

I feel it is important to take time to understand global trends and events in order to keep clear the lens through which we view what is happening in our own lives. So take a few minutes and get ready for the world in 2016.

The 2016 Summer Olympics will be in Brazil this August. In November the United States will elect a new President. Meanwhile, Europe will continue to experience one of the largest human migrations in decades. El Nino will continue to disrupt normal weather patterns for months in to the new year. Toxins from oceanic plastic pollution will continue to enter the human food chain as fish that we eat digest the small plastic particulates from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Virtual reality will begin to displace other forms of mainstream media consumption. Anxiety disorders will begin to be discussed openly as they now affect 40% of the population. The amount of global wealth belonging to the top 1% is expected to become greater than the amount of global wealth belonging to the other 99% combined this year. 2016 also commemorates 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare and this special anniversary year will be sure to inspire many Shakespeare related themes throughout the year. See for your self below what the Economist predicts for "The World In 2016".    

Careers Of The World's Best Founders

So you want to be the next Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, or even Colonel Sanders. Ever wonder where do the best founders come from? Well consider your self covered thanks to this new collection of careers of the world's best founders.

The journey to greatness is not always just sunshine and rainbows. It is a journey and along the way there are plenty of successes, failures, new ventures founded, and lessons to be learned. You hear some of those stories on Ambition Today. If you are wondering about societies late great founders of the past though, then here you go. Fleximize answers the following questions:

• How did the greatest entrepreneurs start out?
• What were their biggest successes?
• What failures did they have to overcome along the way?

Here are the answers all packed into one charted collection of the careers of 33 inspirational company founders, showing that there’s more than one path to success.

Why You Should Guest Vlog

If you are a blogger then you know one of the top ways to grow your audience is exposure on other blogs. Everyone tries to do it and it works in a very symbiotic way. Person one gains some followers from person two's audience and then vice versa person two gains some followers from person ones audience. 

This doesn't only work for blogs though and there is a new medium growing in the world right now. Thanks to the increase and accessibility to bandwidth more and more people are consuming video through the day. This has led to the rise of the daily video blog, hence forth referred to as the vlog. 

Vlogging is growing in frequency as many content creators realize the high value of having consistent content and it's ability to repeatedly bring the same users back for more.  This is opposed to creating one hit wonder viral videos. With a consistent flow of content that can be found in the same spot the audience seeks you out more often. They know they can count on new fresh content every time they visit. 

So as vlogging grows we are going to see some interesting strategies to grow these new video audiences. One of those happened recently and is a great example of collaborative guest vlogging.  Last week Casey Neistat, a vlogger residing in NYC, flew out to Ohio to hang out with Roman Atwood. Casey currently averages about 300 thousand views per daily vlog, while Roman Atwood currently averages around 1 million views. 

This is the end result below and it is pretty cool in a sort of Bill Murray Groundhog Day kind of way. Watch the same day, from two different camera angles, two different approaches to editing, and two different audiences.

The Day From Casey Neistat's Perspective: 

 

The Day From Roman Atwood's Perspective: