Episode Summary
Executive Summary: The episode traces Elon Lee’s path from Microsoft and immersive digital storytelling to co-founding Exploding Kittens, a tabletop game company built on playful design and viral marketing. It shows how community-driven campaigns, clever packaging, and face-to-face play turned a simple card game into a durable IP business, later expanded through new games, media, and international partnerships.
Main Topics: Elon Lee’s early obsession with tinkering and problem-solving (Priority: 5/5): As a child, Lee dismantled toys and gadgets to understand how they worked. A physics teacher later redirected that curiosity into structured problem-solving, helping him discover he was strong at finding mistakes and fixing broken systems. From Microsoft to immersive alternate-reality storytelling (Priority: 5/5): Lee’s career at Microsoft moved him from program management into design, where he worked on Halo and later The Beast, an early internet scavenger-hunt story tied to AI and Halo 2. These projects taught him how to build fan engagement through narrative participation. The origins of Exploding Kittens as a weekend experiment (Priority: 5/5): During a Hawaii trip, Lee, Matt Inman, and Shane Small turned a simple Russian-roulette-style card prototype into a humorous, highly interactive game. The name, artwork, and mechanics were designed to be instantly funny, easy to learn, and social. Kickstarter as community-building and story engine (Priority: 5/5): Exploding Kittens launched with a $10,000 goal but transformed its Kickstarter page into an audience-driven storytelling machine. Stretch goals became achievements, and backers were invited to create content, which fueled virality and helped the campaign become historic. Scaling from crowdfunding success to retail business (Priority: 4/5): After raising nearly $9 million and shipping 700,000 decks, the founders leveraged the Kickstarter buzz to win major retail distribution. The company learned that product quality and memorable marketing had to work together for lasting success. Expansion beyond the original hit and the challenge of durability (Priority: 4/5): Exploding Kittens launched multiple follow-up games with mixed results, including Bears vs. Babies and You've Got Crabs, before finding another hit in Throw Burrito. The company then drew outside investment to expand into media, international markets, and additional product lines. The company’s philosophy: face-to-face play in a screen-saturated world (Priority: 4/5): Lee frames the company’s mission as getting people away from screens and back around tables. The games are designed to make the people playing with you entertaining, reinforcing social connection as the core value.
Key Arguments: A good tabletop game must be both fun to play and easy to explain, because social play depends on immediate comprehension and repeat value. Marketing is not separate from product design; in tabletop games, the box, name, and premise must create enough curiosity to get people to take the game home. Kickstarter works best as a community-building platform rather than merely a funding source, and Exploding Kittens used it to spotlight fans instead of money. Durable success comes from combining a strong game with memorable storytelling and high-visibility retail execution. Even with one breakthrough product, a game company cannot rely on a single hit; it must constantly develop new products to reduce risk. The company’s core advantage is creating face-to-face experiences in an era when many people are craving offline connection. Luck matters, but persistence matters more; Lee argues that not giving up is the most reliable path to good outcomes.
Data Points: Kickstarter goal: $10,000 - Initial crowdfunding target for Exploding Kittens in 2015 Kickstarter total raised: almost $9 million - Final amount raised by the Exploding Kittens Kickstarter campaign Kickstarter backers: 219,000 - Record number of backers for the campaign First print run: 700,000 decks - Number of decks produced after the campaign Company lifetime sales: around 60 million games - Total games sold worldwide by Exploding Kittens at time of interview Global board game market: $9 billion to $17 billion - Host cites current size estimates of the board game market Strategic card game growth: more than 200% since 2019 - Sales surge mentioned for games like Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering First-year retail sales after Kickstarter: about $20 million - Exploding Kittens revenue from retail in the year after the campaign Cost to make and ship one deck: between $1 and $2 - Estimated unit cost for producing a game deck Retail price per game: $20 - Typical selling price discussed for Exploding Kittens Bears vs. Babies Kickstarter: about $5 million - Funding raised for the second game’s campaign Throw Burrito Kickstarter: about $3 million - Funding raised for the later hit game Throw Burrito first-year sales: 500,000 copies - Retail sales in its first year, far above the industry norm Typical first-year game sales: 30,000 copies - Benchmark cited for normal tabletop games 2020 revenue increase: 90% - Company revenue growth during the pandemic Asmodee acquisition stake: 55% - French publisher bought majority stake in Exploding Kittens in 2021 Company team size: about 70 people - Approximate current headcount mentioned Current annual sales: over $100 million - Private-company estimate given by Lee Sales channel mix: 60% brick and mortar - Share of business coming from physical retail stores
Pivotal Quotes: "We don't make entertaining games. We make games that make the people you're playing with entertaining." — Elon Lee: Lee describes the company’s design philosophy and focus on social interaction "What if we change the way the Kickstarter works? What if instead of a regular page, what if we convert our entire page into a game that tells stories?" — Elon Lee: Lee explains the pivot that turned the crowdfunding page into a fan-driven storytelling experience "I live in constant fear that this whole thing is going to topple." — Elon Lee: Lee reflects on the fragility of success and the pressure to keep producing hit games
Implications: Exploding Kittens shows that tabletop success depends on both game design and cultural packaging. For creators, the lesson is to build community, not just a product; for the industry, offline social play remains a strong growth area.
About How I Built This with Guy Raz
Guy Raz interviews the world’s best-known entrepreneurs to learn how they built their iconic brands. In each episode, founders reveal deep, intimate moments of doubt and failure, and share insights on their eventual success. How I Built This is a master-class on innovation, creativity, leadership and how to navigate challenges of all kinds.New episodes release on Mondays and Thursdays. Listen to How I Built This on the Wondery App or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can lis...