The Board Game Billionaire: From a $10k Kickstarter to $100M/Year Business

My First Million

Hubspot

Entrepreneurship, Investing, Business

4.8 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2025

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Want your own $100M side project? Get our guide to win your first 100 customers: https://clickhubspot.com/wfp Episode 699: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Elan Lee ( https://x.com/elanlee ) about growing Exploding Kittens from a $10K Kickstarter campaign to $100M dollar company. — Show Notes: (0:00) Humble Success: Exploding Kittens Insights (8:07) The origin story - From 10k to $9M on kickstarter (16:17) Focus on the crowd, not the funding (20:41) Games should not be entertaining (23:52) The Kitty Test pilots (27:57) $0 marketing hacks (38:49) Pushing past the ‘no’ (41:07) Business as a game (45:32) Creativity loves constraints (54:28) Irritation is the source of innovation (59:13) Designing a game with Tim Ferriss (01:04:08) Do what never makes you bored — Links: • Exploding Kittens - https://www.explodingkittens.com/ • Paxsite - https://www.paxsite.com • Elan on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@mrelanlee — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd

Transcript

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0:00.0	We launched this thing saying, all right, let's, let's aim for $10,000.
0:04.3	We hit our $10,000 goal in seven minutes.
0:07.8	And in the first 48 hours, we had $2 million.
0:11.1	After that is when the story gets really interesting.
0:14.5	I feel like I can rule the world.
0:17.0	I know I could be what I want to.
0:19.9	I put my all in it like no days off on the road.
0:23.0	Let's travel.
0:23.6	Okay, well, good.
0:25.0	Sam, do you want me to kick it off?
0:26.6	Yeah.
0:27.1	Well, yeah, I do.
0:28.5	First of all, Sean, how did you guys even come to the same world?
0:31.5	Craig.
0:32.0	So we invited Craig to the event because Craig's one of my favorite people even though he doesn't play basketball we're like Craig you got to be there you're the the exemption you know you're not the basketball guy but
0:41.5	we just want you there for sure we told him what it was he got excited and he goes I have somebody who I
0:47.2	think should come and we were like okay great who's the plus one and he he was I guess how long have you guys
0:52.9	been friends it's got to be a decade now it's so funny because he called me up and he was, I guess, how long have you guys been friends? It's got to be a decade now.
0:55.5	It's so funny, because he called me up and he's like, okay, I have the weirdest invitation
0:59.9	ever.
1:00.6	It's a basketball event, but I'm not going to be playing basketball.
1:04.8	And I was like, okay, that's as weird as it gets.
	...

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