Leave it to Google to come up with innovative ideas within the businesses it manages. The company has a healthy policy to encourage its own employees to launch startups, but remain with its fold or umbrella. Arcade, a social-gaming startup, has been founded by an employee of Google for the past one year. Michael Sayman, all of 21 years old, is the co-owner of this gaming startup.
He is wunderkind, who joined Facebook when he was even younger, at 17 as an intern and then left the social media organization and joined Google. Sayman is said to have been part of the Google Assistant team as a product manager but would now be running this startup that would have trivia games and other content the full details of which are yet to be shared.
This outreach is part of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc’s project called Area 120. Under this project the tech giant would provide Arcade with the funds required to hire staff and to take of other expenses associated with starting and running a company, including on design, marketing and promotions and so on. Once the project becomes successful, the product could be taken over by Google and made part of its offerings.
If the project does not measure up, it is then wound up. There are previous examples of this nature. For the employee, the risk of starting up a new venture is minimized.
Google has had to create products or service within its overall ecosystem that can keep the younger lot in the population engaged. It could not succeed in creating an alternative to Facebook. These gaming apps may be part of the answer in offering something to the children and youth. Now it is in the hands of the wunderkind Michael Sayman to work on his project and come up trumps.