Today we’d like to introduce you to Omeed Shams.
Omeed, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I got my early start in tech, being immersed in healthcare technology. My family has a health tech firm which I was groomed to be the succession plan for, and I was there for about ten years; whereby the time I was 25 I was on the leadership board and helping run the company of a few hundred employees.
Now, when I wasn’t innovating in healthcare, I was spending most of my time with video games. Despite my parents telling me that games were a waste of my time, I found a sense of purpose with them. Not just playing them, but designing for them, and learning to do things like hack and exploit in-game economies (which, fun fact, helped pay my way through college).
So, here I was at 25, on the verge of becoming CEO of my family’s firm, and I was questioning if healthcare technology was really my calling. I knew I was a rockstar at what I did, but also knew I wasn’t being challenged enough. And though Healthcare and B2B have it’s intricacies, I always knew gaming and B2C were much less forgiving; and would bring with it more challenge and growth.
So I decided to start committing a little more time a focus to these passions in gaming – and teamed up with a few friends to moonlight a new gaming venture. Our vision was to change the way people explore the real world, through mobile interactive adventures.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I just LOLed :). The opposite of smooth. Early-stage startups are very volatile, and emotional beings. I could write pages upon pages of struggles – but instead, I’m going to re-frame and provide two (of many) lessons I have learned along the way:
1) Expectation: There is no such thing as overnight success. Start your journey with the mindset that it will take at least five years to achieve true product/market fit – or to “bring your idea to life.” Treat it like a marathon, and be ready for all of the emotional highs/lows along the way. Be resilient.
2) Balance: Because it’s a “marathon,” you need to make sure you manage your “sprints” so you don’t burn out. There will be periods where you don’t have the time or energy to focus on anything but your business. Then there will be moments where you get to pause and come up for a breath. Take advantage of the latter moments, and spend time with the people/things/etc. that will allow you to recharge and go again.
KWEST – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
While moonlighting, we had successfully bootstrapped our first product to market in less than a year – which was a blend between a mobile game, scavenger hunt, and guided tour. And before the end of our first year, we had already generated 40,000 downloads, $150,00 in revenue, and had worked with brands like Lyft, Vita Cocoa, and GNC. We were starting to see early signs that geo-spatial and AR entertainment were the next medium that world-class brands would use to engage with their consumers. And although we were showing already showing traction in the space, we knew our experience wouldn’t penetrate mass-market scale. So, we started to think bigger.
We began exploring what the next, more scalable, iteration of our experience would look like – and throughout that process turned our attention towards Niantic, who had released Ingress and Pokemon Go. What most of the general public still doesn’t know, is Pokemon Go wasn’t an overnight success or one-hit-wonder. And Niantic had spent almost a decade bringing to life AR and geo gaming, which is estimated to hit $285B in revenue by 2023.
So, already having experience launching a geo-spatial game, and unique insights into this emerging market, I became convinced that we could build something with mass-market scale. And with AR technology rapidly maturing, I knew what took Niantic ten years, would only take us 2-3, and we could build something even more innovative. This conviction ultimately leads me to walking away from my family legacy and turning my full-time focus toward this vision.
And so from this, Kwest was born. Which today is a world-class team of 15 individuals who have experience building games for the likes of Disney, LucasArts & AMC. Together our mission has been to continue pushing the boundaries of AR Entertainment and Geospatial Gaming. And for the past two years, that’s been channelled towards building a new, augmented reality gaming platform, which will be unlike anything the market has seen – operating at the intersection of Geo Gaming and Interactive Storytelling. Think Pokemon Go, meets Choose Your Own Adventure.
We’ve designed a game that allows consumers to engage in different story worlds out in their city, where choices matter and they’re experiencing varied and unique gameplay that actually leverage the AR realm. And we’re also focused on accessibility – aiming to be the first in this space to open up geo gaming to mobility challenged individuals.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Not following the prescribed, “Silicon Valley,” way of launching a startup – which entails raising money on a pitch deck, and building your product with someone else’s money.
Instead, we have built and operated for the last five years without taking any outside funding; and have just now gotten to a stage where we feel it’s appropriate to raise strategic capital.
Being non-traditional (seems to be a pattern with me) and building a completely distributed team when everyone said it was a terrible idea. I couldn’t be more proud of our band of brilliant, passionate nerds.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://kwest.app
- Email: hello@kwest.app
- Instagram: instagram.com/kwestapp
- Facebook: facebook.com/kwestapp
- Twitter: twitter.com/kwestapp
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