Exploding Kittens: Elan Lee. How cat-themed Russian Roulette changed game night forever
Timestamps are as accurate as they can be but may be slightly off. We encourage you to listen to the full context.
Podcast Summary
This podcast episode features Elan Lee, co-founder of Exploding Kittens, sharing the remarkable journey from a hastily modified deck of cards to a $100+ million gaming empire. Lee discusses his path from Microsoft game designer working on Xbox and Halo to burnout, then co-founding a marketing company called 42 Entertainment. (31:35) The breakthrough came during a Hawaii vacation where Lee met Matt Inman (creator of The Oatmeal webcomic), leading to their collaboration on Exploding Kittens. (44:12) What started as a $10,000 Kickstarter goal exploded into nearly $9 million, becoming one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns ever with 219,000 backers.
- Main Focus: How creative storytelling, community building, and treating marketing as interactive theater can transform a simple card game concept into a global phenomenon without traditional advertising budgets.
Speakers
Elan Lee
Elan Lee is the co-founder of Exploding Kittens, a gaming company that has sold over 60 million games worldwide. He previously worked at Microsoft for six years as a game designer on the original Xbox console and helped design Halo, one of the most influential video games in history. Lee also co-founded 42 Entertainment, a marketing company that created innovative alternate reality game campaigns for major brands including the groundbreaking "The Beast" campaign for Spielberg's AI and the Halo 2 marketing campaign using payphones worldwide.
Key Takeaways
Embrace Creative Constraints to Spark Innovation
Lee's physics teacher changed his trajectory by giving him a unique challenge: find mistakes in a new textbook instead of traditional homework. (08:30) This constraint-based approach later influenced how Exploding Kittens was created - starting with a simple Russian roulette concept using cards and a Sharpie. The lesson is that limitations often force more creative solutions than unlimited resources.
Community Over Funding in Crowdfunding
When their Kickstarter hit $3.5 million and stalled, Lee made a pivotal decision to focus on the "crowd" rather than the "funding." (49:18) They created achievement-based stretch goals that required community participation - like photographing cats dressed as tacos or Batmans in hot tubs. This approach turned backers into collaborative storytellers rather than just customers, ultimately leading to their record-breaking campaign.
Design Games That Make People Entertaining
Lee's core philosophy is "we don't make entertaining games, we make games that make the people you're playing with entertaining." (88:25) Every card in Exploding Kittens was designed to create interactions between players rather than just player-versus-game mechanics. This human-centric design philosophy helps explain why their games create lasting social experiences that drive word-of-mouth marketing.
Marketing as Interactive Storytelling
Drawing from his alternate reality game background, Lee treats marketing as elaborate interactive theater. (55:53) Their convention strategy involved building a giant furry cat vending machine that dispensed random items for $1, creating hour-long lines and blocking multimillion-dollar competitor booths. The key is making marketing feel like play rather than advertising.
Persistence Through Strategic Adaptation
After initial success with Exploding Kittens, Lee faced the "one-hit wonder" fear when subsequent games failed. (67:55) Rather than giving up, they systematically analyzed what made games successful, ultimately discovering that Throw Throw Burrito worked because it combined clear shelf appeal with genuine fun. The lesson is to treat failures as data points rather than endpoints.
Statistics & Facts
- Exploding Kittens raised almost $9 million on Kickstarter with 219,000 backers, still holding the record for most backers on any Kickstarter campaign 10 years later. (50:19)
- The company can produce games for $1-2 and sell them for $20, creating exceptional unit economics that fund their creative marketing approaches. (61:35)
- During COVID-19, Exploding Kittens experienced a 90% increase in revenue in 2020 as families sought offline entertainment options while staying home. (78:22)
