Dec 22, 2025 · 1h 27m · how-i-built-this
Exploding Kittens: Elan Lee. How cat-themed Russian Roulette changed game night forever
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, Guy Raz interviews Elan Lee, co-founder of Exploding Kittens, chronicling his transition from designing major video games and alternate reality campaigns at Microsoft to building a multi-million-dollar tabletop gaming powerhouse dedicated to face-to-face human connection.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 35.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.2 Guest teaching 4.2 Guest disagreement 1.3 Guy pushing back 1.5
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:23:08 Elan vehemently rejects Guy's defense of Candyland
When Guy tries to defend Candyland as a childhood classic, Elan bluntly shuts him down, declaring it the worst game in history that requires no player agency.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 1:06:43 Guy challenges Elan on screen time contradictionGuy pointedly pushes back on Elan's corporate direction, noting that after leaving Xbox to combat screen addiction, he took investment to make TV shows and digital apps.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 42:00 Elan explains achievement-based crowdfunding strategyElan breaks down how they rescued a plateaued campaign by throwing out funding goals and converting the Kickstarter into community-driven interactive quests.
Guy holds their own ▶ 54:20 Guy highlights real unit economics versus operating costsGuy demonstrates strong industry business knowledge by unpacking how low bill-of-materials costs are swallowed up by retail marketing and competitive spending.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early Curiosity: Tinkering and High School Physics Breakthrough | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Guy asks about Elan's early schooling and aptitude. Elan reframes his academic history, explaining how a physics teacher's unique challenge turned a struggling student into an A-plus physics achiever. | |
| Behind the Scenes: An Internship at Industrial Light & Magic | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Guy astutely identifies that Elan was likely ill-suited for strict project management. Elan wholeheartedly agrees and recounts how his mentor redirected him toward game design. | |
| Pioneering Alternate Reality Games: Steven Spielberg’s 'The Beast' | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Elan walks Guy through the conception of 'The Beast' ARG for Steven Spielberg's movie AI after discovering the film edit didn't match conventional video game formats. | |
| Leaving Microsoft to Pursue Interactive Storytelling | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Guy synthesizes Elan's emerging career arc as creating immersive rabbit holes for fans, which Elan validates as interactive storytelling on a massive scale. | |
| 42 Entertainment and the Legendary 'Halo 2' Payphone Campaign | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Elan describes the ambitious Halo 2 ringing payphones campaign and educates the host on the economic exhaustion of running a service-based agency business. | |
| Returning to Xbox and Facing an Existential Crisis | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Elan recounts his return to Microsoft and the personal wake-up call when visiting his nieces and nephews, leading him to quit and seek non-screen games. | |
| A Trip to Hawaii and Meeting 'The Oatmeal' Creator | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy and Elan discuss meeting Matthew Inman, creator of The Oatmeal, setting the stage for their collaborative partnership in Hawaii. | |
| From 'Bomb Squad' to 'Exploding Kittens' | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Guy questions why Elan would leave big-tech security for a small card game; Elan clarifies that neither founder originally expected it to be a real company. | |
| Designing for Human Connection and Preparing the Kickstarter | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Elan details his card game design philosophy centered on player-to-player engagement, while outlining their modest initial print goals. | |
| The Record-Breaking Kickstarter Campaign and Community Achievements | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | Elan explains how they pivoted the Kickstarter from money-focused stretch goals to community-driven achievement goals after early organic hype plateaued. | |
| Overcoming Manufacturing Hurdles: The Meow Box and CAH Support | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Elan describes the logistical scramble to produce 700,000 meowing boxes and the crucial guidance provided by the creators of Cards Against Humanity. | |
| Entering Big-Box Retail and Generating $20 Million in Sales | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy and Elan explore how the unprecedented Kickstarter buzz translated directly into massive twenty-million-dollar retail distribution during year one. | |
| Guerrilla Marketing: Inside the Furry Cat Vending Machine | 2 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Elan shares the story behind their eight-foot furry cat vending machine convention stunt that handed out random items to generate viral buzz. | |
| The Economics of Board Games: Community, Margin, and Marketing | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Guy presses on unit economics and margin realities. Elan educates on hidden marketing costs required to keep retail games moving off store shelves. | |
| Navigating Flops: The Struggles of 'Bears vs. Babies' and 'You've Got Crabs' | 4 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Elan breaks down the game design flaws that doomed their follow-up releases, Bears vs. Babies and You've Got Crabs, despite initial crowdfunding success. | |
| Mid-Roll Teaser: Dodgeball Meets Burritos | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Elan recounts acquiring and retheming 'Flaming Mangoes' into 'Throw Throw Burrito', explaining how retail packaging design drove immediate breakout sales. | |
| Expanding the Universe: The Chernin Group Investment and Screen Dilemma | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Guy highlights the irony of taking Chernin Group capital to build TV shows and digital apps after founding the brand to reduce screen time; Elan addresses his internal dilemma. | |
| Riding the Pandemic Wave: Massive Growth and Supply Chain Woes | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Elan details the massive surge in pandemic game demand and the logistics battle of container shortages and factory lockdowns during 2020. | |
| Going Global: Asmodee Acquires a Majority Stake | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Elan explains the strategic decision behind selling a 55% majority stake to global tabletop giant Asmodee to power international translations and distribution. | |
| Fatherhood and Fixing Pre-K Games with His Daughter | 3 | 5 | 3 | 2 | Elan humorously attacks Candyland and describes co-designing four successful pre-K games with his four-year-old daughter after finding existing options unplayable. | |
| The Business Today: Design Retreats and the Marketing Veto | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Elan details their company's offsite design retreat process and the structural rule granting the marketing department absolute veto power over any game pitch. | |
| The Exploding Kittens Philosophy: Making People Entertaining | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Guy and Elan discuss the crisis of social disconnection, with Elan sharing the core Exploding Kittens motto: making the people you play with entertaining. | |
| Reflecting on Luck, Persistence, and the Broken Coin Machine | 3 | 4 | 3 | 2 | Elan illustrates his view of luck via a broken bus coin machine story, followed by a lighthearted, comedic clash with Guy over the quality of Candyland. | |
| Sponsored Feature: The Reinvention of Stemple Creek Ranch | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Monologue sponsored profile highlighting Loren Poncha and the regenerative farming evolution of Stemple Creek Ranch. |
Statements from this episode (32)
Lee hand-animated visible breath effects for Titanic's famous floating door scene
“I got to briefly work on Titanic. You know the scene at the end of Titanic where they're on, on the door, the famous door scene, right? They're in the freezing cold water.
When they're talking to each other, you can see their breath. The thing is that was fil…”
Spielberg ARG 'The Beast' was named after its 666 project assets
“The first time we did an inventory count on how many assets we had built, the number came out to 666, and so the project got its name.”
Lee: Service agency models are exhausting because revenue stops when you sleep
“It's, it was a service business, right? So. You're constantly hustling. Yeah. So we would make money as long as we were working. And every night I would go to sleep and think, I'm about to go to sleep for eight hours. And during those eight hours, I'm not maki…”
Lee resigned from Microsoft because Xbox games isolated children
“And I just thought, like, oh, I am so clearly part of the problem here. Like, something about it feels broken. And within about two weeks, I resigned and knew I had to go do something else.”
Lee expected $10,000 on Kickstarter while his co-founder predicted $5 million
“And I said, 10,000 dollars. That seems about right. That's how much we'll earn off of it. And Matt immediately said, five million dollars.”
Exploding Kittens founders split equity equally on a handshake without lawyers
“Instead, we'd said, let's all own a third of this thing, and shake hands, and move forward, and that was it.”
Lee: Card games should pit players against each other, not the game
“My whole principle behind the thing was, every card in this game should invite an interaction between you and another player. So, I really wanted this thing to feel like you are playing against players. You're not playing against the game. Everybody is playing…”
Exploding Kittens set its $10,000 Kickstarter goal based on minimum print costs
“If I contact a local card manufacturer, I was like, what's the minimum order? And he said you have to produce a thousand decks of cards. Like, that's the minimum here. I was like, cool, ok, fine. And I was like, well, how much does that cost? And he said, oh, …”
Lee: Exploding Kittens raised over $1M in first 24 hours
“Within the first 24 hours, we passed the one million mark.”
Exploding Kittens still holds the Kickstarter record for the most backers
“We're 10 years later, and it is still, holds the record for the most number of backers of any campaign in history.”
Exploding Kittens produced 700,000 decks for initial Kickstarter run
“So 219,000 backers made means that because most people wanted more than one deck we had to produce 700,000 decks of cards for our very first print run.”
Exploding Kittens spent $1M extra on custom meowing box sound chips
“And I think we ended up spending an extra million dollars just to produce that chip.”
Exploding Kittens shipped all Kickstarter orders on schedule with CAH help
“And so the campaign launched in January, we promised it would ship in July, and because of Cards Against Humanity and their help we shipped every single copy by July 30th of that year.”
Exploding Kittens generated about $20M in retail sales in its first year
“The first year, like, after Kickstarter, the first year, we pulled in about twenty million in sales just moving through retail.”
Exploding Kittens used a furry vending machine costume to outdraw convention competitors
“We built a vending machine costume. And eight hours a day, our little team would sit inside this horribly cramped space, pushing watermelons and cantaloupes and hot burritos out the front of this vending machine to this crowd. And the crowd grew, and they love…”
Lee: Kickstarter's real purpose is community building, not fundraising
“Go to Kickstarter to build a community. It's not there to raise funds. It has the side effect of raising funds, but you're really raising a community, and that's the place to do it.”
Lee: Exploding Kittens consistently generated $20M annually for ten years
“Every year, like, For the first few years, honestly, for the first, like, 10 years, Exploding Kittens is very consistent at hitting that.”
Exploding Kittens costs $1 to $2 to manufacture and retails for $20
“It's to make cards, put them in a box. This comes out to like between one and two dollars based on the product. Right. And we're selling it for 20.”
Lee: Bears vs. Babies raised roughly $5 million on Kickstarter
“And we raised like five million dollars on Kickstarter for that campaign.”
Lee: You've Got Crabs lasted only eight months in retail
“And this one only survived about eight months in retail before it completely disappeared.”
Throw Throw Burrito sold 500,000 units in year one versus 30,000 norm
“And that thing, I think its first year, it sold 500,000 copies. A normal game, its first year, will sell 30,000 copies. Like, this was just off the charts for a game, and every year since then, it's grown, because it keeps spreading.”
Lee: The Chernin Group invested $40 million in Exploding Kittens
“And so it took a few months of negotiation, but we finally took an investment from them. They invested forty million in the company, and immediately they got to work at helping us expand, figuring out, like, alright, how do we build a TV show, and how do we bu…”
Lee: Exploding Kittens will only do screen media if tabletop remains core
“The deal I kind of made with myself was as long as the core of this company is always Board games, tabletop games, things that inspire face-to-face interaction. I am okay exploring expansions in these other realms that feel like they are serving additional exp…”
Lee: Exploding Kittens revenue increased 90% in 2020
“And we saw a 90% increase in revenue that year, just in 2020.”
French game publisher Asmodee acquired a 55% stake in Exploding Kittens
“So, they're called Asmodee, and they purchased 55% of Exploding Kittens.”
Elan Lee: Co-Founder Shane Small Left Exploding Kittens in 2015
“Shane left in Shane actually left in twenty-fifteen, the very first year.”
Exploding Kittens exceeds $100M in annual revenue across over 100 published games
“We're over a hundred at this point. I, you're right, I can't say the exact number, but we have, we've now published more than a hundred games.”
Brick-and-mortar stores represent 60% of Exploding Kittens' total sales
“Brick and mortar is still about 60% of our business.”
Exploding Kittens' marketing team has ultimate veto power over any new game
“And the reason that we're doing that is because they have ultimate veto power over anything. So we could think it's the best game in the world, but if the marketing team cannot figure out how they're going to sell that thing, that game dies that moment.”