The Strategies and Tactics for Building a Bestseller from Nothing — Elan Lee of Exploding Kittens

Tim Ferriss and Elan Lee reveal the full two-year journey of creating Coyote, a casual card game described as 'rock paper scissors on steroids' where players play each other rather than the game. They break down the entire creative process, from janky Sharpie-on-blank-card prototypes to the breakthrough on a rainy walk in Toronto, plus the principles that separate hit games from failures. The back half is a rare deep dive into the business: how line reviews with Walmart and Target actually work, why 70% of game sales are in-person retail, how to find sales agents, deal structures, and social media marketing. Elan shares his testing philosophy (400 'kitty test pilot' families recording video sessions, judged on a single question: 'Do you want to play again?') and his core thesis that games should make the players entertaining, not be entertaining themselves. They close with concrete paths for aspiring designers via crowdfunding plus licensing to a publisher.

• Elan asks Tim 'why do you want to build a game?' and explains that the answer (deeply personal, wanting to give a gift) versus the superficial answers most celebrities give is what told him this collaboration would be special.
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• The conceptual breakthrough: on a walk Tim names rock paper scissors as a favorite, and they realize the magic is that over multiple rounds you stop playing the game and start playing each other.
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• After being stalled at 1% for months, they designed 80% of Coyote in a matter of days once they hit the 'let's go again' reaction after every playtest.
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• Elan reveals Exploding Kittens was the number one selling game in the world, but is now number two behind 'Hurry Up Chicken Butt,' a game he designed with his four-year-old daughter that sells one copy every four seconds.
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• Bombshell business metric: 70% of Exploding Kittens sales are in-person retail and only 30% are online, the reverse of what most people expect.
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• On the very first Coyote line review with Walmart, they secured a full-line purchase (every store) on the initial pitch, something that had never happened for Exploding Kittens before.
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• Elan lays out the three paths to selling a game (self-publish, go to a publisher, crowdfund) and reveals his favorite is a combination: start on crowdfunding to prove it, ship it, then take that proof to a publisher.
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• He demystifies the seemingly insulting 2% royalty rate, explaining it is 2% of revenue (top line, not Hollywood-accounting net), which after the math is closer to 20-30% of profit with the publisher taking all the risk.
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• Coyote has 66 total cards and went through about 573 different names before landing on the final one.
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• Tim was initially inspired toward trading/collectible card games via the podcast 'Think Like a Game Designer' with Justin Gary, a former high-level Magic: The Gathering player.
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• Elan's two recommended books: 'A Theory of Fun' by Raph Koster and 'Don't Shoot the Dog' by Karen Pryor, the latter teaching that every confusion is the designer's responsibility, not the player's.
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• A core game-design rule: if a component does not need to be in the game, remove it; they replaced bingo-chip life tokens by just flipping cards face down.
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• Elan built a network of 400 'kitty test pilot' families who get free prototypes and record video sessions; games ship in batches of five at a time over 6-8 months, judged on whether players say 'hell yes' to playing again.
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• A market-research firm playtest with strangers cost them $25,000 and was useless, prompting them to build their own testing system, since nobody actually plays board games with strangers.
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• To review the flood of test videos, the team watches them at 4x speed and flags moments (like a deep inhale signaling rules confusion) for a second team to analyze; they use Vimeo for it.
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• Elan deliberately dresses in a t-shirt and jeans (not a suit) for pitch meetings because as 'the creative guy' he isn't taken seriously in formal wear, a lesson from his Microsoft days.
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• Three years ago retail pitches centered on TV, billboards and product placement; today buyers only care about short-form social media video as the marketing plan.
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• Kickstarter funded Exploding Kittens with 219,000 backers, but only about 50% of Kickstarter projects ever shipped as promised, poisoning the crowdfunding well and lowering numbers today.
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