"An ex-Venture Capitalist Perspective"

#PokemonGO: Background: about 25 years ago, a partner and I founded the venture capital industry in New Zealand. I was on the board of directors of over 20 companies and I assessed well over 1000 businesses, including startups through to well-established companies. (Before anyone writes me off as a dinosaur I was only 29 when we started, so am "only" 53 now :-)In my 20 years, I saw only one company with such a "love-hate" relationship with its customers - one that didn't die an inglorious death anyway. That company was KFC NZ (yep, the fried chicken franchise).We made this investment because we could see the massive potential that the brand had in NZ, and the poor strategic direction that had gotten it to its position of "love-hate". Everyone loved the product (finger lickin good!), but was so tired of chicken bones all over the floor, surly staff who made it seem like they were doing you the biggest favour, paint chipping off the walls, that horrible salmon colour, goofy Colonel Sanders ads, gum under the tables and so on and so on.So, when we made the investment, I went onto the board and started cajoling the rest of my directors into removing all of the "hate" aspects of the brand. This involved two main things that were seen as huge risks by the board at the time: 1) acquiring a deep understanding of the consumers and the brand experience and 2) massive $ investment in the stores, product and people. Did it work? One measure: the value of the company when we invested was about $50m (penny dreadful!) and it's now worth approx $400m, BECAUSE we took the hard calls, did the hard work and removed the "hate".I hope I'm not seen as overly negative, because I truly love PoGo, but I know I'm not alone when I say I also hate it (and I won't list all of the things that have already been so well canvassed on this glorious sub!).So, if anyone at Niantic reads this, here is a heart felt plea to: acquire deep knowledge of the game (sorry, Mr Hanke, lvl 19 is not enough - I'm sure you haven't felt the despair of being shaved or having to fight another Dragonite), take the hard calls and make the investment in your product. We all want to stop the "hate"!P.S. A word of gratitude to exec Dronpes and all the travellers on the road for even making such a post (hopefully!) worthwhile :-) and I'm sorry if the formatting isn't great, I'm still learning...Edit: trying to add line breaks via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2mkSaRC