The archive · Consumer Apps · Strategic decision · 2016–2018
Volley bets smart speakers become a family gaming platform
Ex-Harvard roommates pivoted an iOS consultancy to voice games; Song Quiz hit No. 1 on Alexa and Volley passed 900k monthly users by YC W18 Demo Day.
Volley
What the business is
Volley builds voice-controlled games and entertainment — trivia, choose-your-own-adventure stories and party games — for Amazon Alexa and Google Home, earning from Amazon's developer rewards plus in-app purchases.
Starting capital：>$1M seed led by Advancit Capital before YC's W18 class
How it started
Max Child and James Wilsterman, Harvard roommates and longtime friends, were running an iOS consultancy when voice apps took off. On the side they had hacked games — a trivia game played by swiping push notifications and a Facebook Messenger chatbot pet — and found the lightweight play intriguing. Around a year and a half before March 2018 they shifted the company's focus to voice: 'Voice was sort of the obvious next step,' Child said.
What happened
Volley's first voice title, Spelling Bee, flopped because Alexa struggled to recognize single letters, confusing B, C, D and E. Later titles took off: Song Quiz, a name-that-tune game, became the No. 1 game on Alexa by reviews with a five-star rating across 8,842 reviews, and Yes Sire, a choose-your-own-adventure storytelling game, also topped Alexa's charts. By March 2018 Volley had more than a dozen live titles, was earning in the five-figure range monthly from Amazon's developer rewards program, and was preparing subscriptions and in-app purchases. The startup raised more than $1M in seed funding led by Advancit Capital ahead of joining Y Combinator's Winter 2018 class, and pitched at Demo Day as a six-person team in San Francisco.
No ending yet — it is still running.
Background
Volley builds voice-controlled games for Amazon Alexa and Google Home, betting that smart speakers in one in five American homes would become a real gaming platform. The company's own products were the evidence: Song Quiz, its name-that-tune game, became the No. 1 game on Alexa by reviews, and the whole suite passed 500,000 monthly users within a year of launching.
The founders, Harvard roommates Max Child and James Wilsterman, had run an iOS consultancy and hacked lightweight games on the side — a trivia game played by swiping push notifications and a Messenger chatbot pet. Around a year and a half before March 2018 they shifted the company to voice, which Child called 'the obvious next step' after watching voice assistants enter American living rooms.
The path was not a straight line. The first voice title, Spelling Bee, failed because Alexa could not reliably hear single letters. Later games found the format's strength: Song Quiz became the No. 1 game on Alexa by reviews with 8,842 five-star ratings, Yes Sire topped the storytelling charts, and Volley grew to more than a dozen live titles. It earned five-figure monthly revenue from Amazon's developer rewards program while preparing subscriptions and in-app purchases.
Volley raised more than $1M in seed funding led by Advancit Capital ahead of Y Combinator's Winter 2018 class. At Demo Day on 2018-03-19 the six-person company claimed 900,000 monthly users and the No. 1 game on Alexa — early proof for the bet that people would gather around a speaker to play together.
What has to be true
- One in five US households had a voice assistant, so the installed base existed before the content did.
- Voice games remove the learning curve: anyone from five to 85 can join a game in a room without controllers or instructions.
- Amazon's developer rewards gave a pre-monetization startup real monthly revenue while it built subscriptions and in-app purchases.
- The founders' iOS experience made rapid title iteration cheap, so Spelling Bee's failure was survivable and instructive.
What can be applied
Entering a new platform is a portfolio of small bets: Spelling Bee showed Alexa's limits, Song Quiz showed where it excelled — keep shipping titles instead of staking the company on the first one.
Aftermath
As of 2018-03-19 Volley was live with more than a dozen voice titles, the No. 1 game on Alexa by reviews, roughly 900,000 monthly users per its Demo Day pitch, and seed funding from Advancit Capital, Y Combinator and others. The sources record no outcome beyond this stage — subscriptions and in-app purchases had been announced but not yet measured.
Sources
- Here are 64 startups that launched today at Y Combinator's W18 Demo Day
- Volley's voice games for smart speakers have amassed over half a million monthly users
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