The MBA Graduate Behind Pokémon GO

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Pokémon GO’s fusion of augmented reality (AR) and real-world application has already been heralded as deeply significant for the gaming industry because it takes people outside of their homes rather than keeping them inside.

But, did you know that the company which developed the game is helmed by an MBA graduate?

Two decades ago, John Hanke undertook an MBA at UC Berkeley-Haas with a dream of starting a company that drew on his love of games and knowledge of programming. He is now the CEO of Niantic, Inc., which developed Pokémon GO in collaboration with the infamous pocket monster franchise.

UC Berkeley-Haas made entrepreneurial ambitions “attainable”

“I wanted to build a company but I had no idea how to really do that,” Hanke said back in 2014, when explaining why he had sought an MBA at UC Berkeley-Haas. “Haas gave me all the tools I needed and it also gave me the confidence…by allowing me to meet entrepreneurs and then go work beside them to see that it’s attainable; there are some people that have already done it,” he added.

It seems fair to say that Hanke can now be added to this list, and given the current level of interest in Pokémon Go, the MBA graduate looks to have become an extremely useful point of reference for a school which has sent comfortably more MBAs into technology than any other industry in each of the last two years.

Indeed, Jerome Engel, founding executive director of Haas' Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and who teaches MBAs on the same subject, paid tribute to Hanke this week: “John represents many of the best attributes of entrepreneurship and Berkeley-Haas: Leadership through continuous cycles of innovation, without attitude or bravado, creating value for society and all who collaborate with him.”

From Meridian 59 to Pokémon Go via Ingress

The MBA graduate’s journey to Niantic, Inc. and Pokémon Go started even before he completed the program, when he helped develop an early online role-playing game called Meridian 59 (M59) in 1995. In 2001, Hanke co-founded Keyhole, a company specializing in geospatial data visualization, and one which was acquired by Google for a staggering US$35 million just three years later. The UC Berkeley-Haas alumnus stayed on at Google and was consequently able to work on its Google Earth, Maps, and StreetView projects.

Niantic, Inc., meanwhile, began life as an internal Google company founded by Hanke as Niantic Labs in 2010, before acquiring independent company status in last year’s Alphabet shakeup (which also saw a Wharton MBA graduate take over as Google CEO). While housed within Google, Niantic developed Ingress, an augmented reality game with the express intention of encouraging people to interact with their community and with each other – the stated vision of the UC Berkeley-Haas alumnus. Said to have attracted 250,000 people to live events around the world, it is mapping data collected by Ingress that provided the starting point to making Pokémon Go a reality.