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

Tim Ferriss Show episode with no sponsor read, in which Tim Ferriss sits down with Elan Lee, co-creator and CEO of Exploding Kittens - sixty million games sold - and former chief design officer at Xbox, to reveal the secret two-year project that grew out of Lee's first appearance: Coyote, Ferriss's own card game. Lee describes it as rock paper scissors on steroids - twenty gestures, sixty-six cards, playable cooperatively or with sabotage, named for the trickster mythology - and Ferriss admits the name alone took about five hundred seventy-three candidates and heavy testing. The conversation opens the whole curtain on building a bestseller from nothing: the creative process, development, distribution and retail. Lee's brainstorming rule anchors the craft talk: do not lock your head on finding one particular thing, because you will almost never find it - stay open to something, anything, and tweak it later, and brainstorming becomes a pleasure. Ferriss traces his own path from Dungeons and Dragons refuge to realizing an RPG was too complex for adult friends with one free hour. PARTIAL COVERAGE: this summary highlights the creative principles; the distribution and retail detail is not covered. These are the hosts' own experiences and views, not independently verified.