Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast in
Speaker 1: which we talked with some of the brightest minds working
Speaker 1: in media today. I'm Andrew Wallenstein with Variety with a
Speaker 1: name like Exploding Kittens. You know it's going to be
Speaker 1: an unusual company, but the brand doesn't even begin to
Speaker 1: tell the strange story of a board game that is
Speaker 1: clearly on the verge of becoming a whole lot more
Speaker 1: after landing a thirty million investment from the Churning Group
Speaker 1: late last year. To find out what they're doing with
Speaker 1: all that money, I've got company founder and CEO Elon
Speaker 1: Lee with me today. Thanks for coming in. It's a
Speaker 1: plus here, Thanks for having me. So what what kind
Speaker 1: of sick bastard names their company or game Exploding Kitten?
Speaker 1: Where does that come? I know, I know, you know.
Speaker 1: The original name of the game was Bomb Squad, and
Speaker 1: that seems more taking right, right. So the concept of
Speaker 1: the game was like, let's have a deck of cards,
Speaker 1: will have a few bad cards in there, the bombs,
Speaker 1: try to avoid the bombs, and you go through the
Speaker 1: duck trying to draw as many cards as you can
Speaker 1: while avoiding the bomb. And my business partner Matthew Inman
Speaker 1: who writes and draws The Oatmeal, said, the Oatmeal is
Speaker 1: a comics, an online comic, one of the world's most
Speaker 1: popular comics. In fact, I know it, I know it.
Speaker 1: Shout out to matt over here. Um. He looked at
Speaker 1: this and he said, hey, you know, being scared of
Speaker 1: the bomb is so obvious. What if instead you were
Speaker 1: scared of acute, adorable, fuzzy little kitten. And we called
Speaker 1: the game Exploding Kittens. And um, when Matthew Inman of
Speaker 1: the Oatmeal makes a suggestion, uh, the correct answer is yes,
Speaker 1: let's do that. Um. And sure enough he was right,
Speaker 1: and the thing caught on like crazy. And now we
Speaker 1: have a game called Exploding Kittens, and everybody seems to
Speaker 1: want it. Well, so to the caught on crazy point.
Speaker 1: I I full disclosure. I'm not a big as what
Speaker 1: they call now table top games. I'm going to convert you.
Speaker 1: This is my goal for the day. I'm going to
Speaker 1: show you what you're missing. But so because I'm sort
Speaker 1: of out of touch with that world. What are the
Speaker 1: signs of success that one achieves that merits a thirty
Speaker 1: million dollar investment? Right? Yeah, Well, let's be clear, none
Speaker 1: of us ever saw that coming. So what happens is, Um,
Speaker 1: we really thought this whole thing was just going to
Speaker 1: be a little weekend project, right we I Matt had
Speaker 1: been working on the Oatmeal. I was the chief design
Speaker 1: officer at the Xbox. I just thought, like, we all
Speaker 1: were really good at our jobs. We know what we're doing.
Speaker 1: Let's try something different, just for a weekend project. Fun.
Speaker 1: Will make this little game, put it up on Kickstarter,
Speaker 1: will print out, I don't know, five hundred copies. We'll
Speaker 1: try to raise ten thousand dollars, and if we're successful,
Speaker 1: I'll invite all my friends over. We'll order a bunch
Speaker 1: of pizza and beers, and we'll just pack boxes cardboard
Speaker 1: boxes in my garage and and that will be a
Speaker 1: really fast, super fast. Uh. We spent a few weeks
Speaker 1: putting the thing together, and uh, in those thirty days,
Speaker 1: we raised almost nine million dollars instead. And so that's
Speaker 1: the first trick, right, Like you get a runaway success
Speaker 1: like this, something that really strikes a chord, something that's
Speaker 1: beautiful and funny and interesting, and everyone who looks at
Speaker 1: it thinks I want to get my hands on that,
Speaker 1: Like that is a thing I need in my life. Um,
Speaker 1: and then beyond that, over the last five years, since
Speaker 1: the end of that Kickstarter campaign, we've sold more than
Speaker 1: nine million copies of that game. It's in twenty six
Speaker 1: different languages right now. And when something hits that level
Speaker 1: of popularity, Uh, it attracts the attention of a lot
Speaker 1: of big players. Now, if one were to look at
Speaker 1: your resume, you mentioned Xbox, You've worked at Industrial Light
Speaker 1: and Magic. You're I mean a tech Okay, you said it. Um,
Speaker 1: So how does someone I know it was just a hobby,
Speaker 1: but how does someone with your background come to something
Speaker 1: that seems sort of old fashioned? Um? My whole life
Speaker 1: has been spent making making things for a screen, putting
Speaker 1: kids in front of screens basically, And uh, I did
Speaker 1: that for more than twenty years through the Xbox I've
Speaker 1: done I've run advertising companies, video game companies. I've run
Speaker 1: a clothing company that was heavily screen based. Uh. We
Speaker 1: can talk about what the hell that means sometime. Um.
Speaker 1: But I finally got to this point where I realized
Speaker 1: I am very much part of the problem. Like every
Speaker 1: time I walk into uh, my my family's house, my
Speaker 1: cousin's house. Uh, and they're staring at screens instead of
Speaker 1: having a conversation with each other. With me, I'm the
Speaker 1: problem there. And so I decided, what if instead we
Speaker 1: tried as an experiment, the same storytelling, same entertainment, all
Speaker 1: the things that I learned working at places like the
Speaker 1: Xbox and industry, light and magic. What if we applied
Speaker 1: those to something that lets us celebrate each other, uh,
Speaker 1: sit around the table, laugh, eat, make fun of each other,
Speaker 1: form alliances, uh, form betrayals like all that stuff where
Speaker 1: we become the entertainment. What if I built the tools
Speaker 1: to facilitate that. And that's what Exploding Kittens is. I mean,
Speaker 1: you almost describe this, or maybe it's not, almost as
Speaker 1: an act of penance on behalf of your screen based career.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say no to that. Um it's it
Speaker 1: was a lot of years of thinking really hard about
Speaker 1: what are the right tools for storytelling? And now how
Speaker 1: do I make that much much more social so that
Speaker 1: instead of the stories that I tell bringing you away
Speaker 1: from reality, what if they very very much root you
Speaker 1: in reality with the people that are in the room
Speaker 1: with you. And you know, you'll have to forgive me
Speaker 1: for my condescension towards these this tabletop game category. I
Speaker 1: used to call them board games. But the interesting thing is,
Speaker 1: unbeknownst to me, this whole category is quite a growth story.
Speaker 1: I mean, what am I missing? So I think we're
Speaker 1: just watching the pendulum swing quite a bit. Um. We
Speaker 1: have gone so far into the digital realm that there's
Speaker 1: been a bit of backlash, right people shutting down their
Speaker 1: Facebook accounts and trying to get off of social media.
Speaker 1: And what we're watching now is the pendulum swing the
Speaker 1: other way. What can we do, even if it's just
Speaker 1: once a week, What can we do with our friends,
Speaker 1: with our family? What how do we how do we
Speaker 1: enjoy each other's company a little bit more? And games
Speaker 1: are the easiest possible. Think they're great ice breakers. It's
Speaker 1: sort of that social lubricant um. It'll make you laugh,
Speaker 1: they'll make you creative. Uh, they'll make you form teams
Speaker 1: with other people. And it is kind of the shortest
Speaker 1: route from point A to point B where your goal is,
Speaker 1: let's let's celebrate each other, let's enjoy each other. And
Speaker 1: games have really, really in the last five years ppped
Speaker 1: up to become the tool by which that is achieved.
Speaker 1: And is there something with the way you guys approached
Speaker 1: this space that made Exploding Kittens resonate the way it has,
Speaker 1: because I wonder if it's the very irreverence of the name,
Speaker 1: which is so different than when I think back to
Speaker 1: my candy Land Monopoly, so, you know, stayed and formal.
Speaker 1: This feels like brand wise, maybe that's why you broke out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that has a lot to do with it.
Speaker 1: I think, Um, traditionally classic board games and card games,
Speaker 1: Monopoly and Uno and all those, we all were raised
Speaker 1: on those. We know how to play them, we understand,
Speaker 1: but but they don't make you laugh. They don't. It
Speaker 1: feels like they are thirty years old, fifty years old.
Speaker 1: And the reason for that is because they are thirty
Speaker 1: years old and fifty years old. And we really wanted
Speaker 1: to step out and say, um, not that we expect
Speaker 1: this to be successful, but that there is an opportunity
Speaker 1: here to build the kind of game that we would like,
Speaker 1: a modern take on a car game, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: name it something funny, and the art on every single
Speaker 1: card is going to make you laugh, and the rule
Speaker 1: set is going to be unlike anything you've ever seen before,
Speaker 1: and the instructions are going to be fast, and they're
Speaker 1: going to make you laugh at well as well. The
Speaker 1: very first line of the instructions I'm so proud to
Speaker 1: say is stop, don't read these Reading is the worst
Speaker 1: way to learn how to play a game. Instead, go
Speaker 1: to this website, watch our four minute video, and you
Speaker 1: will become an expert that quickly. Everything about the game
Speaker 1: is kind of like, we don't need to think so
Speaker 1: hard about the past and pull all that baggage forward
Speaker 1: with us. Why don't we start fresh because the stakes
Speaker 1: are so low, let's just give it a try. So
Speaker 1: Exploding Kittens is really only where this has started. You
Speaker 1: have since expanded this into multiple game. Yeah, we have
Speaker 1: six games out on the market right now. Um. The
Speaker 1: latest one is called Throw Throw Burrito, and um it's
Speaker 1: our take on what happens if you mix a card
Speaker 1: game with dodgeball. So such an intuitive right, why did
Speaker 1: I come? But nobody, especially in the in the sort
Speaker 1: of heritage of games, nobody's looking at areas like that.
Speaker 1: And this game is played. It's a fast, crazy game.
Speaker 1: You've got a deck of cards. Everyone's moving cards around
Speaker 1: the table really fast. You're trying to collect a set
Speaker 1: of three cards faster than everybody else. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, there are these cute, squishy foam burritos being
Speaker 1: hurled across the table. So while you're collecting cards, you
Speaker 1: have to duck and dodge and pick them up and
Speaker 1: throw them back and worry about way more things at
Speaker 1: a time than your brain is capable of worrying about.
Speaker 1: And that chaos is where the fun lives. For that game,
Speaker 1: Throw Throw a Burrito has now become the number one
Speaker 1: best selling game in Canada. It is hot on the
Speaker 1: heels of Exploding Kittens, which holds the number one spot
Speaker 1: in the US. And it's really exciting for us to
Speaker 1: see that when we engage our audience, when we challenge
Speaker 1: them to think about games differently and to have fun
Speaker 1: around a table in a new way, they put their
Speaker 1: money behind those things. And so where does the churning
Speaker 1: group come into this? At what point do you say, hey,
Speaker 1: we need more money if we're going to grow, which
Speaker 1: I presume is what brought you to Yeah, so we
Speaker 1: have been in a very fortunate position. Um, we've turned
Speaker 1: down multiple investors over the last five years because we
Speaker 1: haven't needed money. We've frankly making games as cheap. You
Speaker 1: just have to come up with the right ideas and
Speaker 1: have the right marketing tools in place. UM, for me,
Speaker 1: the game design, my partner Matt, who does all the
Speaker 1: art and has a huge marketing push through the oatmeal,
Speaker 1: we really haven't needed very much else. We have an
Speaker 1: incredible team, and so we thought, let's just keep doing this.
Speaker 1: We don't need investors. And then the Churning group showed
Speaker 1: up and they said they had a really interesting pitch.
Speaker 1: They said, you guys have built this thing as big
Speaker 1: as you can. You are the biggest gaming company in
Speaker 1: the world. Uh, card game company in the world, and
Speaker 1: you've grown this through hit after hit after hit, and
Speaker 1: that's You're going to keep doing that, but you're not
Speaker 1: going to see exponential growth. The next phase is is
Speaker 1: to turn this from a product into a brand, and
Speaker 1: that means movies and TV shows and theme parks and
Speaker 1: all the stuff that you have no idea how to
Speaker 1: do and we are very very good at And I
Speaker 1: kind of scratch my head and thought, you know, that's
Speaker 1: a really strong argument. I don't know how to do
Speaker 1: any of that stuff, and clearly it's the next step.
Speaker 1: So uh, we started talking with them and got her
Speaker 1: worked our way into some negotiations, and uh, they wanted
Speaker 1: to put thirty million dollars in in order to help
Speaker 1: us turn this thing into a brand. You know. For
Speaker 1: those who don't know Turning Group, the investments that they
Speaker 1: put out there tend to end up at the hottest companies.
Speaker 1: Look what just happened with Barstool Sports. Uh. The question is, though,
Speaker 1: is how soon are we going to see sort of
Speaker 1: the impact of this investment? UM you know, is is
Speaker 1: an Exploding Kitten's animated show coming on next week somewhere
Speaker 1: or what we are We're exploding nothing next week, but
Speaker 1: we are exploring all kinds of stuff. We are exploring
Speaker 1: television and movies. A much easier way to think about
Speaker 1: this and the reason that we are attractive to churnon
Speaker 1: is UM. Brand creation is usually done through something small,
Speaker 1: accelerated and then grown into something very very big. Marvel,
Speaker 1: for me, is the perfect example of that. Right, very cheap,
Speaker 1: easy to make comic books years and years and years ago,
Speaker 1: which now is one of the biggest media empires there is, right,
Speaker 1: But it's because they create very compelling characters, they tell
Speaker 1: really good stories. You fall in love with those characters
Speaker 1: and stories, and so when they are able to bring
Speaker 1: them to life on a much larger scale. The audience
Speaker 1: comes right along for that ride. The investment came to
Speaker 1: us because Churnon thinks as as we do, the games
Speaker 1: might be an interesting opportunity for that same formula, very
Speaker 1: cheap to make its ink on cardboard. Uh, really amazing characters. Um,
Speaker 1: were those characters come into your home, they come to life,
Speaker 1: You fall in love with them, you laugh, You have
Speaker 1: this incredible time, and what if we use that as
Speaker 1: the seed to start growing that forest and start planting
Speaker 1: these things that could grow into the next amazing TV show,
Speaker 1: the next amazing movie. Um. The good news is these
Speaker 1: are so much easier to make than starting a movie
Speaker 1: or a TV show from scratch. So we're going to
Speaker 1: be trying a bunch of them, and we're gonna be
Speaker 1: going in a whole bunch of different directions. None of
Speaker 1: them will be that surprising, but they will all be
Speaker 1: based on a very cheap, very easy bet that we
Speaker 1: made five years ago, which is, here's a card game
Speaker 1: that we love and we think you'll love it too.
Speaker 1: Have to note some irony here, a company that was
Speaker 1: rooted in your effort to get away from screen seems
Speaker 1: to becoming full circle. I know, Um, the way I
Speaker 1: look at it is we all our games are uh
Speaker 1: anti screen, and and the reason is again because we
Speaker 1: want people to come together with their friends and family
Speaker 1: and have fun. But we get to a certain point
Speaker 1: where we've hit as many people as we can, and
Speaker 1: in order to broaden that audience, we have to go
Speaker 1: where those eyeballs are, and so we've done things like
Speaker 1: we made an app for the iPhone and Android, even
Speaker 1: though we thought we never want to touch screens, but
Speaker 1: we made this really really beautiful app that it requires
Speaker 1: you to play with your friends, and so, uh, your
Speaker 1: friend that's out traveling, you're we We actually got so
Speaker 1: many requests from people, um in the military who wanted
Speaker 1: to play the card game, but you know, they were
Speaker 1: stationed somewhere remote and didn't have the cards with them,
Speaker 1: and so initially we made that app to help them
Speaker 1: and to let them play with their family back at
Speaker 1: home and connect and have a good time even though
Speaker 1: they were remote. So we're less anti screen than we
Speaker 1: used to be. I agree it's very ironic upcoming full
Speaker 1: circle on it, but ultimately it is all it is
Speaker 1: all to lend a hand to that effort of let's
Speaker 1: bring people together, let's celebrate each other. I wonder, though,
Speaker 1: if not even a few years from now, your company
Speaker 1: will be known more for I P on screens than
Speaker 1: the coreboard product. Does that trouble you? Um? I think
Speaker 1: that is inevitably true. It's just the world we live in.
Speaker 1: What we can do uh through gaining that popularity, though,
Speaker 1: is constantly push people back to our roots, to the
Speaker 1: fundamentals of why we're here and why we started this company. UM.
Speaker 1: A question I get asked a lot is why are
Speaker 1: our games good? What? What is the secret to making
Speaker 1: a good game? And the secret to making a good
Speaker 1: game is the same secret to building this whole whole company,
Speaker 1: which is, don't make games that are entertaining, make games
Speaker 1: that make the people you're playing with entertaining. And if
Speaker 1: we can remind people of that that the people around
Speaker 1: them are the entertainment. Uh. And these are just the
Speaker 1: tools be at a card game, be at a TV show.
Speaker 1: If we can constantly push people to those things, then
Speaker 1: I think we've still succeeded, even though we're starting to
Speaker 1: involve screens. Another extension to the brand that you had
Speaker 1: coming up was an actual fan convention based on your
Speaker 1: I p based on the whole gaming world. I understand
Speaker 1: has been some changes now, but tell us about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a tricky world out there right now. So we
Speaker 1: decided that, um, if we were going to constantly promote
Speaker 1: these games and constant promote people coming together, why not
Speaker 1: throw and host the World's Best Game Night A a
Speaker 1: festival of games. See new games that you've never seen before.
Speaker 1: Everybody come together, show off your prototypes, show off your artwork,
Speaker 1: form new companies, make your own new stuff. We are
Speaker 1: going to fill a room with the most amazing, crazy
Speaker 1: stuff that you've ever seen. It's the convention that we've
Speaker 1: always wished existed, and we rented out the Portland's Convention Center.
Speaker 1: We called it Burning Cat, of course, and of course,
Speaker 1: as one does, and we were very excited. This was
Speaker 1: going to launch in just a few months. Um. Of course,
Speaker 1: with the current climate, we decided it would be pretty
Speaker 1: responsible for us to ask so many people to travel
Speaker 1: and gather in the same room. So, uh, we are
Speaker 1: officially announcing that, Unfortunately, we're going to postpone it for
Speaker 1: one year. Burning Cat will exist in We have spent
Speaker 1: so much money building the props and the events and
Speaker 1: the and the games for this thing. Uh, so we're
Speaker 1: going to invest a little bit more, put them in
Speaker 1: storage for a few months, and then put them back out.
Speaker 1: Can you give us a just a sneak preview of
Speaker 1: what a proper two might be, because my guess is
Speaker 1: this is going to be as whimsical as the game itself. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're doing all kinds of crazy stuff. So uh, right
Speaker 1: in the center of the convention, we're building an arena,
Speaker 1: literally stadium seating, a stage, this giant arena that will
Speaker 1: host every hour some insane event. We're One of the
Speaker 1: things we're starting to build is a dump tank, but
Speaker 1: it's filled with uh sitting on the pedestal are celebrities
Speaker 1: and it's filled with lacrosse, drinking water, sparkling water. We're
Speaker 1: building sumo wrestling, but the suits are these giant furry
Speaker 1: cat costumes. Were building uh an entire golf course, but
Speaker 1: it's all uh whimsical basketball instead. Um everything we we
Speaker 1: We've got a climbing wall totally covered in fur. We've
Speaker 1: got like just we kind of took all these classic
Speaker 1: things that we've seen at other conventions and carnivals, uh,
Speaker 1: and kind of applied our own little spin on them,
Speaker 1: and UH. The end effect is this just glorious gathering
Speaker 1: of people who want to again have fun, enjoy each other. UH,
Speaker 1: and we serve as sort of the matchmaker for that process.
Speaker 1: So when I show up a who am I going
Speaker 1: to see there? Who is exactly the target demo for
Speaker 1: the brand. So the target demo is this. We have
Speaker 1: two core groups. Um. Mostly our audience is UH and
Speaker 1: you even split males and females ages eighteen to thirty four. Um,
Speaker 1: they love our games. They're the ones who are, you know,
Speaker 1: buying pizza and beer and hosting game night. And there's
Speaker 1: millions and millions and millions of them out there, and
Speaker 1: that's who you're going to see there. We have a
Speaker 1: second audience, which we are delighted with, which is their kids,
Speaker 1: the five to sixteen year olds who play games with
Speaker 1: their parents now and we build the games that allow
Speaker 1: them to do that. So UH, we're devoting all of
Speaker 1: the second day of the convention to kids. And that's
Speaker 1: where we're bringing out some of the craziest lower barrier
Speaker 1: to entry activities so that you can go there with
Speaker 1: your kids and still have an incredible time. So what
Speaker 1: is the next big release for you guys. Um. It's
Speaker 1: very exciting when when Throw Throw Burrito was up on Kickstarter,
Speaker 1: we had an elite reward tire, like the highest possible rewards.
Speaker 1: Here was this thing that we called the Extreme Edition
Speaker 1: and it was instead of little foam burritos and a
Speaker 1: deck of cards, will give you a deck of cards
Speaker 1: and these giant, like three or four ft tall, inflatable burritos,
Speaker 1: two of them, uh, and you throw those around instead.
Speaker 1: So another interesting thing I've learned about what you guys
Speaker 1: did is kickstarters where it all began. But you also
Speaker 1: haven't really left Kickstarter behind either, So what's that about.
Speaker 1: So crowdfunding in general is a really attractive notion for us. UM.
Speaker 1: When you start a new game, your options are self
Speaker 1: self funded, uh, self publish. It tends to be pretty
Speaker 1: small games, or go to one of the big guys,
Speaker 1: Hasbro Mattel. Uh. You know, they pay you a little
Speaker 1: bit of money, they take the lion's share of the
Speaker 1: ownership because they're taking on all the risk. And more importantly,
Speaker 1: very few games go out that way and it's not
Speaker 1: has Browne Matell's fault. They have a small team of
Speaker 1: buyers who have to make some very very focused it's
Speaker 1: every year and I can't possibly get it right, and
Speaker 1: there's three or four people. Crowdfunding is such a beautiful
Speaker 1: invention in the world of tabletop because suddenly, instead of
Speaker 1: trying to convince one or two people that your game
Speaker 1: is great, you get to actually show it to the audience.
Speaker 1: You get to say, hey, four million people out there
Speaker 1: who are in this market, here's my game, here's my
Speaker 1: best idea. If you like it, give me the money
Speaker 1: to help me make this thing, and then we will
Speaker 1: all get to develop it together. And that model is
Speaker 1: so glorious because it changes everything. It makes it so
Speaker 1: the actual best games get made instead of someone's guests
Speaker 1: on what the best games are. And we love that.
Speaker 1: We love the idea that we can put out a
Speaker 1: game and people will look at it and get attracted
Speaker 1: to it and say, I want to help you build that.
Speaker 1: We love the idea that we can put out a
Speaker 1: game and someone can scratch their head and say, I
Speaker 1: don't get this, this doesn't seem good enough yet, and
Speaker 1: then we can work to make it better that has
Speaker 1: never existed before. And because it builds that community, like again,
Speaker 1: I know I sound like a broken record here, but
Speaker 1: because everything we do is based on celebrating the people
Speaker 1: that you're with, crowdfunding is a way that we get
Speaker 1: to apply those same principles to the actual development of
Speaker 1: a game. And what could be better than that? So
Speaker 1: I'm getting a better sense of the world of this game.
Speaker 1: Who would appeals to? I want to now understand Exploding
Speaker 1: Kittens as a company. Uh, you know, obviously it started
Speaker 1: with just a few of you, but what has it
Speaker 1: grown into? My My guess is your offices are probably
Speaker 1: distinctive in some nature uniquely. So yeah, up until about
Speaker 1: a year and a half ago, the office was actually
Speaker 1: in my backyard and here in Los Angeles. Yeah, here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. I tried to keep it really small,
Speaker 1: and once we hired our sixteen person, my wife finally said,
Speaker 1: I'm not waiting in line to use my kitchen anymore.
Speaker 1: Get them out of here. So we rented a space
Speaker 1: here in Los Angeles. We're out up to twenty nine people. Uh,
Speaker 1: moving fast. We hired one more at the end of
Speaker 1: last week, so I had to reduce some math there.
Speaker 1: Um and the office space in general is um. There's
Speaker 1: there's three main areas to our office. One is a
Speaker 1: giant open workspace, lots of yelling, lots of I need
Speaker 1: help with this, who's who's who stole my pencil? You
Speaker 1: know that sort of thing where the goal is all
Speaker 1: of us are wearing so many different hats. None of
Speaker 1: us quite know what we're doing, because we invented as
Speaker 1: we go UM, so there are no private offices and
Speaker 1: everybody has to work with each other UM. The second
Speaker 1: part of the office is our fabrication studio, working with
Speaker 1: UM card games, where you have to make boxes or
Speaker 1: make cards. The process is really slow actually, because you
Speaker 1: have an idea, you send it to China or some
Speaker 1: prototyping facility locally, They build it and they send it back.
Speaker 1: It takes forever. Something's wrong you you go through this
Speaker 1: whole process again, it could take you four or five,
Speaker 1: maybe six months to look at the thing that you
Speaker 1: had in your head. So instead we invested in UH
Speaker 1: three D printers, some scene smals, a glow forge, which
Speaker 1: is a three D laser printer UM and now we
Speaker 1: make our own prototypes in this facility in ten minutes
Speaker 1: and that allows us. Hanging above that is this giant
Speaker 1: neon sign that just has fail fast, and the idea
Speaker 1: is make as much stuff as you can, knowing that
Speaker 1: all of it is going to suck, and that's okay.
Speaker 1: Get through that process because it is at the end
Speaker 1: of that that failing process that you're going to make
Speaker 1: something amazing. Get through the failure as quickly as you can,
Speaker 1: and so we encourage everybody to use that facility as
Speaker 1: often as possible, make all the things, and eventually, hopefully, luckily,
Speaker 1: something beautiful will come out the other end. The third
Speaker 1: space is our gameplay space. Um this started out with
Speaker 1: just my private collection of games and board games and
Speaker 1: card games, and now because of Kickstarter, so many people
Speaker 1: send us their games because they want us to review them,
Speaker 1: they want us to post about them. We get three
Speaker 1: to four games a week at this point, and every
Speaker 1: Friday we order in lunch for the whole team. We
Speaker 1: sit in front of our wall of games, and when
Speaker 1: I say well, I mean fifteen feet tall fifty ft
Speaker 1: wide amounted like so many games you cannot possibly get
Speaker 1: through them all. But we order in lunch and we
Speaker 1: do our best to get through two or three games
Speaker 1: a week because, like everything that I've been saying, if
Speaker 1: if we can work together, if we can celebrate each other.
Speaker 1: If we can understand why this is so much fun,
Speaker 1: then we can create more products like that. And so
Speaker 1: you've got this unique culture it sounds like, and you
Speaker 1: I believe your title is Lord Commander of Fun. Correct,
Speaker 1: everyone happened? That is not actually my title. That is
Speaker 1: a title that a bunch of people have been thrown
Speaker 1: around that I'm doing my best to squash. My title
Speaker 1: is game designer. Okay. Uh. Nevertheless, I assume we're going
Speaker 1: to go from twenty nine employees to maybe three or
Speaker 1: four times that in the coming years. Are you sure
Speaker 1: you could sort of keep that sort of sense of
Speaker 1: culture in place as the growth occur. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that is certainly the goal. It is so important to
Speaker 1: me that we all get to hang out in a
Speaker 1: place build things together, because they get better that way.
Speaker 1: And the more I can encourage people to the more
Speaker 1: I can encourage our accounting team to try game design,
Speaker 1: the more I can encourage our art team to learn
Speaker 1: how the manufacturing process works. The more we can all
Speaker 1: get really good at each other's jobs, or at least
Speaker 1: understand really well how they work, the better games we
Speaker 1: can make as a company, because all the parts know
Speaker 1: what all the other parts are doing well. It sounds
Speaker 1: like you're taking a lot of the manufacturing process creative
Speaker 1: processes in house as possible. But I'm curious. We talked
Speaker 1: earlier about you know, burning cat being postponed, the current climate,
Speaker 1: coronavirus being as crazy as it is, does it disrupt
Speaker 1: your business in other ways so much? Unfortunately, most of
Speaker 1: our products are manufactured in China, and here's the perfect story.
Speaker 1: So we're we're figuring out how to print in other
Speaker 1: places now that China is quite problematic. But our new game, uh,
Speaker 1: Throw Throw Burrito has these two foam squishy burritos in
Speaker 1: them that you throw at each other and they're amazing. Um.
Speaker 1: But when China stopped being able to produce anything, we
Speaker 1: suddenly we had to order five thousand copies of that game,
Speaker 1: and we just couldn't know what nowhere. So I sent out, uh,
Speaker 1: some interns to every toy store in Los Angeles, and
Speaker 1: every pool supply store in Los Angeles, and every dollar
Speaker 1: store in Los Angeles and said, get all the foam things,
Speaker 1: all of them, and not only bring them in, but
Speaker 1: let's figure out where the all manufactured. And then we're
Speaker 1: going to cold call every single manufacturer on the planet
Speaker 1: to figure out a solution to this thing. And the
Speaker 1: horribly depressing answer is from China. From China, and that's
Speaker 1: that's devastating for us on a business level because we
Speaker 1: now have a single point of failure. And I didn't
Speaker 1: ever think of a country as a single point of failure,
Speaker 1: but here we are, um but devastating from kind of
Speaker 1: a global manufacturing community where we have lost the ability
Speaker 1: to compete in the toy manufacturing space, we being anyone
Speaker 1: other than China, And that's been hidden for a long
Speaker 1: time and now suddenly we're seeing it. What we're going
Speaker 1: to see in the next few months is you walk
Speaker 1: into Target or Walmart and a certain kind of toy
Speaker 1: is just going to be gone, a certain kind of
Speaker 1: toy that requires Chinese manufacturing because they have the monopoly
Speaker 1: on that. Those shelves are just going to be empty.
Speaker 1: And uh, that supply chain is depleted. Right now, we
Speaker 1: haven't seen the effects of it, but we're going to.
Speaker 1: And I hope that means we can kind of find
Speaker 1: we can sit down and maybe collectively come up with
Speaker 1: some better, more long term solutions, uh, in terms of
Speaker 1: getting the manufacturing out of China, correct, Yeah, or at
Speaker 1: least getting components of it out of China. This is
Speaker 1: something we're exploring heavily right now, is how do we
Speaker 1: make it so that there is no longer such thing
Speaker 1: as a single point of failure. That's not to say
Speaker 1: things will not be made in China, it's to say
Speaker 1: the dependency will not lie on China. This is the
Speaker 1: new reality I think for any and all businesses. But
Speaker 1: you know, bottom line this for me, could your company
Speaker 1: be facing an existential threat here due to this situation? Um,
Speaker 1: there are some games that we will simply not be
Speaker 1: able to produce this year, just at all. And that's
Speaker 1: a shame. And well, we have an enough excess inventory
Speaker 1: that we're okay for a few months. Um. We I
Speaker 1: have also sent out agents to every other manufacturer I
Speaker 1: can think of in Mexico and Taiwan and Poland in
Speaker 1: the UK, and we found solutions. We we have ways
Speaker 1: to to put ink on cardboard and so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of games we can make which will save our company. Um.
Speaker 1: But it makes growth through more creative games very very
Speaker 1: limited this year. Well, I wish you the best of
Speaker 1: luck facing that challenge. Certainly, lots of businesses facing their
Speaker 1: own challenges in this time. But um Elan thanks for
Speaker 1: coming in and talking to us about exploding him. It's
Speaker 1: my pleasure. It's so much fun to be here. This
Speaker 1: has been another episode of Strictly Business. Tune in next
Speaker 1: week for another helping of scintillating conversation with media movers
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