Insight
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.”
Disclosure
Brick-and-mortar stores represent 60% of Exploding Kittens' total sales
“Brick and mortar is still about 60% of our business.”
Disclosure
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.”
Insight
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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Disclosure
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.”
Disclosure
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.”
Assertion Supported
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.”
Insight
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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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, …”
Assertion Supported
Lee: Exploding Kittens raised over $1M in first 24 hours
“Within the first 24 hours, we passed the one million mark.”
Assertion Supported
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.”
Assertion Supported
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Partly supported
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Supported
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…”
Assertion Contradicted
Lee: Bears vs. Babies raised roughly $5 million on Kickstarter
“And we raised like five million dollars on Kickstarter for that campaign.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Partly supported
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…”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Lee: Exploding Kittens revenue increased 90% in 2020
“And we saw a 90% increase in revenue that year, just in 2020.”
Elan Lee