Pokemon Go circa 2012

Looking at current Pokemon Go success (It added whopping $9B to company's capitalization) I could not help help looking back at another project we did few years ago.

Back in 2012 we, at Codeminders, were working on Computer Vision algorithms for mobile phones. At some point we realized that there is a potential for a business there and developed a demo and even pitched to some angel investors. The investors told us that the gaming aspect is not interesting, and we should focus on some real-life problems like real estate, etc. Eventually we just published a technology demo in app store and let it go.

To demonstrate location-based augmented reality gaming we have chosen Pikachu avatar which you can place at random locations, where your friends can find it. The unique part was that it worked indoors, not relying on GPS alone.

Here is an image from our investor's pitch:

You can see our presentation here (I've removed some boring slides related to financials and planning). Also you can try yourself our demo (Android version, iOS version). In the demo we replaced Pikachu with Squirrel to avoid infringing on Nintendo's trademarks.