| This. I was in Microsoft, part of an org which pulled in billions of dollars in double digits annually. When doing planning and visioning exercise, time and again we would never focus on scenarios which seemed to be ‘trivial’ (translating to hundreds of millions dollar revenue oppurtunity), as we had limited headcount and finite amount of time to execute. Startups don’t realize how constrained are the product teams in big organizations, much more than many startups. Every headcount, every contract worker (if they are allowed at all) need to be fought for. And then there is bureaucracy - post planning and spec’ing it is impossible to do any sort of minor pivot, once the juggernaut starts rolling there is no stopping, no room for even a pause to evaluate a new threat. I’m not an expert of gaming by any stretch and I’m sure the founders decided on best course of actions based upon their priorities but looking at the YouTube Gaming page (http://youtube-global.blogspot.in/2015/06/a-youtube-built-fo...), YouTube seem to be aiming for something which is natural extension of what was already happening in YouTube: “More than 25,000 games will each have their own page, a single place for all the best videos and live streams about that title. You’ll also find channels from a wide array of game publishers and YouTube creators.” I thought the founders were right when they said YouTube Gaming launch is a validation. I’m sure in the initial days YouTube Gaming org would be taking small steps and would try to consolidate what is already happening in YouTube but perhaps in a disjointed fashion. Go for easy discoverability etc. In this situation I would assume that there would be plenty of scenarios left uncovered which an innovative startup can solve for (which initially YouTube Gaming would be incapable of paying attention to due to resource constraints - people, time - however compelling they may be). And hey, one could always build something with acquisition in mind - an acquisition by Google (YouTube gaming) wouldn’t have been a bad way to get validated in the end. |