Board raises $20M and launches Board Studio, letting families vibe-code their own tabletop games

design system context. Go check it out. Figma.com. And our next guest is returning to the show. One of my favorite, it's probably the my number one favorite new consumer electronic device product of the last I don't know how many years. We have Bin Putnham from Ford. She's the founder and CEO. Welcome back. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. How you doing?

What's going on?

Thanks so much for having me back, guys.

Uh Last time you were on, we both left.

We both ordered on the show.

Very easy check out thanks to Shopify.

Yeah, thank

uh and they arrived and uh we have been entertained for hours and really really uh enjoyed the product. Uh but tell us how things are going on your side. Um, it's been a crazy six months. It's been so fun just seeing board actually out in the wild and see seeing people using it and loving it. Um, I think it's really just sort of exceeded our expectations. We have, you know, thousands of households using the product and loving it and people are actually starting to create their own games for board which is been the most uh surprising but exciting development for us.

Yeah. So you threeed us as as Mark Andrea and I were dressed up on Halloween. It's very funny because it's like a

very meta.

It's a character of a character, but uh like what does that actually represent? There there they are in reality

smaller than they looked

on the photo.

In the photo,

they loom large. They loom large. Uh but but why would a customer want to print something? Walk me through the thesis. Like how is this actually playing out?

Yeah. So today people are, you know, using their favorite AI coding tools to build using our SDK, which um really surprised us that your sort of average family was sitting down around this new shared surface trying to create their own experiences. And so we've decided to really lean into that and are creating a product we call board studio um that really makes it just easier for your average person to to start to build. So um they'll sit and uh just prompt and the board will uh board studio will create the experience for them including their very own custom miniatures. Um so very excited to see what people are creating. Everything from educational apps to um things for healthcare uh settings or bars or restaurants. It's really been a diverse range of of interactive experiences.

Yeah. What's the What's the secret to making a you know basically I'll call it like a vibecoded game studio? I imagine you want you don't want to change is like reskinning the best way to think about this because coming up with like original game mechanics and rules and all these things feels like much much much more challenging for the average person than just deciding like I'm going to make this character look like this and I want to change the setting and and choices like that.

Yeah. So I think it's important for us to really create like a batteries included environment. So to give people good project templates, good asset libraries, an easy way to, you know, connect directly to their board so they can kind of automatically build, deploy, and play games and start to test and to help kind of steer people towards experiences where they really can go from prompt to prototype in an hour. So that's not going to be creating highly complex games um with where the technology is today, but it's it's quite impressive how quickly um you know people are able to create things that are fun just using um sort of a set of prepackaged um assets and and templates.

Walk me through uh where the board SDK ends and the and the vibe coding begins. it feels like there's an SDK that's open source hosted on GitHub or your website, something like that. I download that and then I can kind of use the vibe coding tool of my choice. I could use codeex, cloud code, whatever I want to sort of uh uh build, but then am I am I testing the game in a browser? Is it going uh am I deploying to the board? Is there the idea of like test flight or then at some point does it get released to an app store that you review? because I imagine there's all sorts of uh of you know privacy and security uh you know uh goals that you have in mind as the company.

Yeah. So for Q4 you'll be building on a computer and then directly deploying on your board for use with your own family. I think our learning has been that the act of creating a game on board is actually one of the most fun fun games on board. So I think the experience is just going to be vibing things that they love and that their kids love that they want to play in their own homes and then from there if they want to share with the broader community we have a review process. So you submit your game to us we have content standards and controls and then we'll release those games in our board store. So, the first of the community games goes live next month, and that was something that a member of the community created using the arcade pieces from our arcade suite, and it's a reimagined uh game of pinball that we're super excited about, and that will go live in July. And it just went through our review process to ensure that um it was fun and accessible for the community.

Yeah,

I have a game idea, Monopoly style game where you develop data centers.

Yeah.

Love it.

I Yeah, I was thinking uh I was on the

discounted cash flow simulator. It just runs a full spreadsheet sort of like how ramp labs came out with their ramp sheets. You know, you just get the kids started early.

These will be the the least popular games in your on your community forum, but the mo potentially the most popular.

My children will be required to play them 8 hours a day, probably 996 really

to make sure that they understand the discounted cash. How did you feel your intuition was around this launch, you know, versus um mere uh I feel like the hardest thing with hardware is you spend like, you know, one, two years, sometimes more time developing something and you just have no idea. You you have an intuition around how people will react to it. Did you have more confidence going into board than the last goound? uh and and you know did did obviously the launch has been great but did it kind of meet your expectations um and how are you kind of adapting your thinking going forward? I think it surprised me honestly. You know, I think we thought that we would be talking to kind of early adopter gadget geeks, maybe some hobbyists who wanted to build, you know, interactive D and D campaigns on board early days. And the audience has been much broader than expected. You know, we have grandma and grandpa who are buying it for when the grandkids come over along with, you know, um, teachers and doctors and restaurant owners. So the breadth of the audience I think has really surprised us and it's great but it's definitely been um a challenge the team now has to meet because we have to create games quickly that can satisfy not just deep passionate gamers but people who for whom this is like really their only gaming experience. It's bringing sort of new people to the table and so it's been really fun but the mission of making um playing together more accessible and creating together more accessible is all that more important given the breadth of the audience.

Yeah. How how are you thinking about intellectual property in the modern era? Because uh I can tell my son a bedtime story where uh Spider-Man meets Superman which belong to different different studios. Never the two shall meet on the silver screen, but in the imagination of a 5-year-old, anything is possible, including uh cross IP infringement. Um, and some of the AI models will sort of play friendly with you if you to ask, you know, chatg, hey, tell me a story or flesh this story out where Spider-Man's interacting with Superman. Um, some of the companies have licensing agreements and they make royalty payments and all sorts of things. But there's some sort of interaction there where I can draw Spider-Man and I think that's legal. I think I can just draw a image of Spider-Man, give that to my kid. But uh if I take a picture of that, upload that to board, I imagine at some point you'd be partnering with companies. But is there some sort of terms of use that you have to think through or guard rails that you put on? Because some of the magic of creation is drawing Mickey Mouse for the first time. Uh but if you're monetizing that and selling that, that's a whole different equation. So how do you think about uh playing that side? because I imagine there'll be a huge demand for intellectual property based games, but uh you need to be careful that you don't run into any trouble with the big studios.

Yeah, I mean I'd love to get to a point where it's just one big universe where you know everyone is playing together in the board sandbox, but we're obviously not there. Um, so I think today, you know, we are making every effort to respect the respect the IP holders and also respect um the sort of safety and privacy concerns of our community. You know, these are families that are using the device. And I have a three-year-old and I want to make sure that when the three-year-old sits down to make pieces that nothing comes out that would be upsetting or surprising surprising to us. Um, but those are definitely active conversations that we have had since day one with IP holders about how we can move to a future universe where um, creation isn't really limited. Um, that people can can bring Spider-Man and and um, you know, Miss Piggy together into into an incredible new world.

Yeah. Uh, when I think of uh, Dn D campaigns, I I start to think about um, uh, almost like internet connectivity within the game. I I imagine that most of the games are self-contained. It feels like there is a there's an internal state of, you know, is the is the cartoon character clean? You have to wash them off. If you save the game, you come back still dirty. Uh but uh how are you thinking about making the games are are you thinking about expanding to something that is more cloud interactive multiplayer at some point? Is any of that on the horizon? Is that interesting? Is there demand for that even? Yeah, that's definitely a polarizing topic within our audience. Um, some people would love to be able to start a game on their board and then have grandma play on her board in a different state.

Um, which we we don't do today because the other half of our audience also feels very strongly that

board feels safe because it is a closed community. Um, so our tabletop product is the first product that will beworked. You will be able to link to your Foundry BTT account and play your campaigns with people elsewhere. Um but we felt like that was um a specific segment of the community that was that understood the connectivity and so otherwise we are keeping it sort of limited to to your board. Um that may that may evolve over time but for now I think those are guardrails that are important to keep it really feeling full family for everyone.

Uh wait so sorry uh take me through the the the product catalog. It sounds like there's there's are are there are there multiple uh products at this point or is it all just one the one that I have the like the big board? I just think of it as the board.

The board.

But is there different is there a different skew at this point or is there one coming?

So we launched with a founders edition which had 13 games included which is the version that you guys have and then we unbundled in March and so we started um selling five of the games all a cart which was

really exciting for us. We saw over 60% attach rate on games with most people buying four out of the five games we had available. So that sort of gave us the confidence that more games were were needed in the community. Um so starting in June we'll launch another 10 games between now and holiday and the board table talk product is sort of the most unusual of those in that is it's specifically for the tabletop community that's currently using BTTS. Otherwise they're all sort of full family games.

Got it. Awesome.

Warhammer, it's coming. I'm excited.

Exactly.

Uh, talk about the round.

Yeah. I want to hit the gong.

How much did you raise

already? We raised a $20 million for

Venture. Good.

Sorry. I know. I I could hear you because I had an idea. But who who led the round?

Mike McNo Square.

YEAH.

YES.

We love Mike.

We love Mike. And I love uh I don't know everything Union Square is doing, this company, everything about this is just uh delightful and amazing and obviously a good business as well. So it's a royal flush of good news.

Yeah, great update.

Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. Have a great rest of your day.

Thank you guys so much.

Great to see you.

We'll talk to you soon. Cheers.

Byebye. Uh, we got to go back to Instagram because uh, in the AI in the era of AI slob videos, the Reynold Encore was doing it better than anybody years and years ago. We got to pull up this video. I want your reaction because this seems like peak cinema. I want your analysis. Break it down.

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Show me the founder transforming into the B2B SAS that they are launching. electronic fuel injection.

Put away the cinematic soft box. Take away the soft shallow depth of field. Show me the founder transforming into the product.

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The one such good ad.

The one to watch. Great ad, right?

Such a good.

You know what else ad?

Cisco critical infrastructure for the AI era. Unlock seamless real-time experiences and new value with Cisco. Mike Isaac said, "Get ready to get even more annoyed by your cheapest friends because the Germinator is sharing that Apple ready's iOS 27 service that will let users split bills for dinners

events by taking a photo of a receipt and assigning items to friends. This is

annoying super intelligence uh that I won't be using. Uh, this will be part of Apple Wallet and Cash. Yeah.

Taking on Venmo and Split Wise.

You got to do the credit card roulette.

I love that game.

Or the inverse credit card roulette where one person you take out one credit card, they don't pay. So, they get the free dinner and everyone else splits the bill and everyone else pays like 10% more, but someone else got like a free dinner, so they get a great, you know,

and everyone got great company.

Yeah. But no, it uh the the every dinner should be a a ruthless game theoretic Nash equilibrium of everyone trying to drink exactly the same amount or buy the most expensive steak to one up each other so that you don't get taken to the cleaners with an even split. You want to get your money's worth. So if you see someone ordering the porter house, you say, "I'll have two porter houses. Give me two porter houses." We're splitting this evenly, right? Oh, you got three glasses of wine. Let's do another round. I'll take 10. But triple me up. And I am having dessert. I'm having

Yeah, I'm a big dessert guy.

I'm a big dessert guy, actually. I'll be taking it to go.

That's the best.

I'll be taking order lunch for tomorrow, too.

And I'd like a third porter house

for lunch.

For lunch tomorrow. Let's split the bill evenly.

Don't Don't pull out your Apple intelligence on me. Don't do that. I What's the crime having a porter house? Having two porter houses, having three porter houses. You're You're going to divide that up with Apple intelligence over your receipt. You don't want one of your good friends to hit their macros today?

What are you trying to do here?

There's a whey protein shortage.

What's going on?

There's a whey protein shortage and you're saying I shouldn't order my second and third porter house.

What is going on?

When you know if I go to the store right now, weighs going to be priced to the

Let me have a porter house. Let me have three.

That's a good place to end it, folks.

Thank you for tuning in. Leave us five stars in Apple Podcast and Spotify. Let me tell you about RAMP one more time. Time is money. Say both. Easy to use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more.