Board raises $15M and launches the first hybrid board game / video game console

Uh before we bring on our next guest, let me tell you about Adio. Customer relationship [clears throat] magic. Adio is the AI native CRM that builds, scales, and grows your company to the next level. You can get started for free. And up next, we have Bren Putnham from Board. Board. Board. It's just board.

I was looking for the name and it was right in front of me. Uh so great to meet you. Uh, incredible launch yesterday.

I think uh I love I my favorite launches to see are ideas that when you see them, they just seem so incredibly obvious and yet no one thought of it or or thought to take it seriously enough and and take it into a into a real product. So, um, it's great to meet you.

Would love uh sort of introduction and quick background on yourself and then we can talk all about the business. Yeah. So, nice to meet you as well. I'm a huge fan. I'm I'm excited for the gong. I'm here for the gong. So, uh, yeah. So, founder and CEO of Board.

Board is the first ever face toface gaming console that blends the best of board games and video games into an entirely new way to play.

What we've done is taken a 24-in touchscreen and trained it to do something that no other screen does, which is recognize not just fingers and gestures, um, but also physical game pieces. So, it knows what the piece is, where it is on the board, and what it's doing. So, it's an entirely new way to play together.

Amazing. uh walk through uh the kind of aha moment when you decided to build this because again um it uh it's so obvious people love board games, people love video games, why not put it together?

Did you when you started thinking about this was did you look throughout history at kind of was there any other attempts that stood out on on things like this? Like uh walk us through that kind of early creative process. Yeah. So, I always end up just building from personal frustration and pain.

So, I um the proud mom now of five kids. I've got two kids and three steps. So, uh real maybe I'll get my gong there. Uh you know, ranging from 2 to 2 to 21. So, we were just trying to figure out ways to connect. And we would play board games and we'd have to play Candyland so my 2-year-old could join.

or we'd try to play video games and the teenagers would smoke us cuz they've clocked so many hours on modern controllers and it just felt like there had to be something that was a lot more fun and intuitive. And so really the unlock was like could we use a piece like a controller?

So you put the spaceship down and it shoots you put the stairs down and the characters walk up it and it was just really a way personally for me to bring my family together. That's amazing. John is back with a gong. Hit it. Hit it again. Once for board, once for the five kids. second time.

Um, that's uh So, so how do you what's it like kind of building building the console and the games themselves at the same time? And then do you plan to I'm assuming you're planning to open up kind of a platform over time, but but maybe start with the first question. Yeah.

So, you know, I've always felt like if you really care about a great experience, you kind of always end up wanting to control the full stack. Um, in my last gig, I built a company called Mirror and we built custom hardware, software and content.

And same thing here, as you start to design the experience you want, you realize you need to control the hardware, the software, and also the games. I think the hard part this time was the games. So, finding the fun is is not an easy formula.

Uh, getting the hardware and software to all work is incredibly challenging and required of a lot of deep technical knowledge. Um, but you know, you could keep making the games forever. Uh, and then eventually you just decide you got to ship. Um, but ultimately for us, we're building a platform and an ecosystem.

So, we want to build a place where people can come and build cool experiences around this shared screen using physical pieces. So, it's really about building a place where other multi-billion dollar businesses can be born.

This is one of the greatest like second company serial entrepreneur stories because I I don't want to simplify it but it's like mirror was like a big screen on a wall and now it's a big screen on a de like that like a lot of the there has to be so many uh like it's also it's also so many so many hardware companies just don't make it so there is no second companies because the founder gets so burnt out that they're like I'm not doing that again.

Yeah, that's for sure. Uh but yeah, I guess I guess like how do you think about uh I I feel like part of the success with board is like there will be a specific game that ultimately drives I would imag I imagine it'll be somewhat of a power law. Video games are very power law driven.

So it's like I'm sure you have confidence in the first game, but it's possible that it'll take a little bit or or a while to have like the hit that makes the product go totally mainstream. So it's like how do you balance that uh needing like the games being like a hits business, right?

There's been a bunch of board games and there's one monopoly, right? Totally. I mean, we think about it really as our job is to show off what's possible with this new technology. So our job is to show the breath of the portfolio.

So we've got quick arcade hits to deep 3D spatial strategy games and really a lot of incredible physical digital interactions. and we think that the great game is probably going to come from someone we don't know yet. So really our job is to just let a thousand flowers bloom and then see what happens.

Um but we feel confident that with this this first set of 12 launch games, we're kind of showing what's possible with this new way of playing and we're really excited just to get people building on board.

Uh do you think that there are like it's exciting to see where the V2 of the technology where you can do unique games that take advantage of this hardware specifically understanding that the pieces touch the screen and they're identifiable?

Um but is there also some value just to being like uh like I've played Settlers of Katon on an iPad like it is a good experience just because it's a good game. And so is there a world where you want to on day one take advantage of a particular app store or catalog that's already there?

Even if you're not taking a big cut, you're just kind of bootstrapping the experience so that people are like, "Oh, well, you know, I I didn't like that game, but it's a 24inch iPad and I was able to use, you know, the game that I liked on day one. " Yeah. I mean, this was like the big debate, right?

New and native or porting IPs. and we made the uh less safe choice I would say to go new and native because we felt we were doing something really novel and we had a really novel technology and we needed games that that fit the tech.

So you know the Wii remote unlocked Wii Sports and Swipe on mobile unlocked Angry Birds and we felt like we have a similar you know a similar technology but I think there's definitely a future where characters or IP that you're familiar with come alive in a new and native way on board.

We've had a lot of exciting outreach from Yeah. meaning brands. Yeah. So, it's been uh it's been a quite a quite a 24 hours of inbounds uh on social for us. Not every day you get a MC Jagger posting about your product within the first 24 hours. So, it's been fun. That's amazing.

Well, I also just bought one live here on the air. You can check Shopify. I love I love I love Shop Pay. I'm like I'm on the website. It's for sale. Uh you're shipping these already. Is that correct? stores or is it uh I didn't even check. So, yeah, we start shipping the Yeah, it'll arrive in 2030, Jordy. Okay. 2035.

Right around AGI is when you're going to get it. No, no. Um, we ship uh the week of 11:10. So, shipping in a week or two. Oh, wow. How did you plan around supply? This feels like the like this could be the holiday gift of the season if you have the supply. Like, how do you plan around?

[laughter] How have you been planning around inventory? Yeah.

So, one of the the nice things about it being kind of the the second goaround is we're working with a tier one CM out of Thailand who has a lot of experience with display products and so they're really adept at being able to scale inventory quickly as we start to get demand signals, but it's definitely going to be a busy holiday for all of us.

Yeah, it's crazy. John, can we get a gong for MC Jagger? Kevin, uh, one of the designers, uh, asked for it. Gong for MC Jagger. Uh, well, congratulations to the whole team. This is super exciting. I I can't wait to uh can't wait to try it.

We'll have to Well, I'm sure there'll be a game that we can play here uh on on air to settle disputes and I'm excited to play with uh with my family uh back home. I love it. Fantastic. Thank you guys so much for having me. Awesome. We'll talk soon. What's the domain, by the way? board. f fun. Yeah, board. f fun.

Available today at board. f fun. I'm normally a dot purist, but boardf fun works. Yeah. Love it. Me, too. You got to go with the fun. Yeah, very this is such an exciting story. I'm seriously so excited about this company. It's amazing. Just like the perfect founder, everything. I'm I'm I'm very excited. Congratulations.

Did you Did you announce last qu Did you announce uh fund raise already? Did you ever announce it? Is that We h we haven't yet. So, we raised um 15 million in funding.

We were um lucky to have um founder uh funds we've worked with before LA box um and then some first round and then some new folks adjacent patron uh metrodora spangel uh join so uh now kicking off our series 8 now all right well to chat about that another gong then there was a very gong he heavy segment but uh uh putting on putting on a master class and uh Yeah, I can't wait to play.

Very excited. Thanks, guys. Have a great rest of your day. Cheers. Um, Shop is just so good. So good. You can just buy stuff. Uh, our next guest is already in the reream waiting room. But quickly, let me