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Volley (W18) - YC Tech Talks: Gaming 2020 (November 9th, 2020)


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·Nov 3, 2024

Hey, how's it going? I'm Max, um, co-founder of a company called Volley Games for voice control devices like Alexa and Google Home devices. Um, we have the number one most popular game on both those platforms, which is sort of a name-that-tune music trivia game called Song Quiz.

Um, we also have some kind of rising star games in the areas of like choose-your-own-adventure style interactive storytelling, um, as well as a pretty ambitious, uh, RPG style voice-controlled game that we're working on that we're pretty excited about. Um, so I think it's kind of an interesting company because it'll be, uh, the first company, you know, the entire interface you're designing for is, um, is brand new.

It's this voice experience. Um, you know, there's no touching, there's no, uh, clicking, and so we're all kind of learning from scratch. Um, but our company is sort of fortunate to be, you know, one of, if not the leader in the space and, uh, have been growing really quickly over the last, uh, three years as these sort of Alexa and Google Home platforms have expanded.

Um, and unless you're concerned, you don't get to work on visuals. Um, our games are also playable across, you know, devices with screens that are voice-controlled, as well as a voice-controlled television, so we're kind of expanding our reach there.

Um, yeah, the company has been growing pretty quickly. We raised the Series A about five months ago, so we've been expanding the team really rapidly. We're 25 people in, uh, San Francisco, although obviously all remote right now.

Um, and we have a couple really cool tech projects that maybe some folks at this conference might be interested in. We're building our own kind of like Unreal Engine for voice, which we think is like the most ambitious kind of gaming engine, uh, for voice-controlled software that we're really excited about.

Um, as well as a lot of, you know, cool new gaming projects, including the ones I mentioned that are already out, as well as, uh, new ones that have not been discussed, uh, or released yet. So if you're interested in working on a brand new platform, a brand new interface, uh, you know, but with the leader in the space and, you know, good growth, um, reach out to me after.

And hiring engineers, data scientists, um, designers all across the board, so I'd love to chat. Thanks so much!

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