Are we living through the most innovative era in human history? In his 2016 book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, World Economic Forum Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab makes the claim that we’re on the precipice of technological advancements that fuse the “physical, digital, and biological spheres.” He posits that the sheer pace, scope and impact of progress will make for advancements we’ve never seen before.
“The speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent,” Schwab wrote. “When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the fourth is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. Moreover, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country.”
On a local level, there’s no exception. The tech industry in Austin grew by 3.5 percent in 2020 and now totals more than 17 percent of all jobs in the metropolitan area, according to a June report in the Austin American-Statesman. And to keep up with stiff competition in a variety of industries, companies aren’t resting on their laurels.
Recently, Built In Austin caught up with two leaders from inKind, a restaurant fintech company, and PlayVS, a platform for high school and college esports, to talk about the strides they’re making in their industries. Though each company is facing starkly different challenges, both have one shared similarity: They’re vying to become the most innovative player in their space.
What’s the coolest project you’re working on at the moment?
Our upcoming app release has me so excited about the future of our company. We’ve completely redesigned the experience for our users from the ground up for our current and future scale.
We’re at this pivotal moment where the number of consumers using our app and the number of restaurants we have on our platform have created a unique opportunity to drive discovery. Thus, we leaned into that aspect in reconfiguring the app, and the resulting functionality and design are fantastic. I believe this will be a game-changer for our business, really expanding our growth and brand recognition.
Our upcoming app release has me so excited about the future of our company.”
What do you envision for the future of your industry, and how is your work helping to shape that future and bring it to life?
The entire hospitality industry faced a black swan event with Covid-19. Financing for many dried up. Additionally, technology became an essential survival tool for restaurants, forcing many to start to use the internet and various mobile apps as a part of their daily businesses. The positive side is that it allowed us as a company to show that our unique approach to funding restaurants and marketing to consumers was as strong as we believed it was. As traditional financing lost faith or became wary of restaurants, we were given opportunities by large national groups we might not have been afforded under normal circumstances.
I believe this shift is permanent. The way restaurants will finance their growth has and will completely change as flexibility and innovation become the rule of the day. Consumers’ relationships with their restaurants will also transform as so many have relied and continue to rely on their phones to connect with their favorite restaurants throughout the pandemic. We are in a special position to meet and marry the needs of the restaurants and consumers. The future looks bright for inKind.
What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently?
I recently helped lead the development of Youth Leagues, PlayVS’s first direct-to-consumer offering. Opening the platform to the public upended some of the fundamental technical assumptions that we’d made in the scholastic product and heightened the impact of every design and engineering decision.
To accommodate players without schools, we had to totally overhaul the role system and onboarding flow. To help players find their friends, we developed a shareable “magic link” system, and to enable independent teams to compete in seasons, we decoupled season enrollment from our scholastic paid subscription model.
The development process unlocked new levels of creativity for our engineers and PMs alike. It was exciting to envision all the structures that we could create around esports competition in the future, viewing Youth Leagues as just one of many future expansions.
Since its launch, Youth Leagues have attracted thousands of new players to PlayVS, many being first-time esports competitors. Today, we continue to ship new features in pursuit of our mission statement: to provide gamers with the most competitions and the best competitive experiences.
My bet is that organized competition will continue to rise as a social medium for both hardcore and casual gamers.”
What do you envision for the future of your industry, and how is your work helping to shape that future and bring it to life?
My bet is that organized competition will continue to rise as a social medium for both hardcore and casual gamers, akin to the rise of streaming and vlogging in the past.
Game developers are already taking notice of the trend toward amateur esports, and they’re doubling down on investments into organized competition. With the field being so nascent, there remain a ton of problems to discover and solve.
Today, the pro and amateur landscapes are fractured, with most leagues being narrowly dedicated to a single title at a single skill level. Individual players may compete in many separate competitions in a given year, but there’s no centralized platform that aggregates these records or the player’s overall journey.
The platform that will win amateur esports will provide the best player experience and a superior, turnkey solution for leagues and game developers to organize competitions. With exclusive developer partnerships and hundreds of past seasons under our belt, I think PlayVS is poised to take that spot.
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