Netflix brings ‘Exploding Kittens’ to mobile devices, set to launch animated series

Exploding Kittens Co-Founder and CEO Elan Lee joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss Netflix's plans to expand into the mobile gaming space as well as the outlook for an animated series.

Video Transcript

- Netflix is betting big on video games to grow its number of subscribers, with key executive hires so far. Our next guest is at the center of that strategy and the mind behind the wildly popular card game, "Exploding Kittens." He's already launched a mobile game on Netflix with a show tied to that set to launch next year. Let's bring in the CEO and co-founder of "Exploding Kittens," Elan Lee. Yahoo Finance's Ally Garfinkle also joining us on this conversation.

Elan, it's good to talk to you. I have to say, it's very refreshing to talk about a popular card game when we're so focused on video games. But talk to me about this particular game, how it works, for those who aren't as familiar.

ELAN LEE: Sure. "Exploding Kittens" is essentially Russian roulette, but kitty powered. We started looking-- when we design games, we look for models to build games around. And I've always watched Russian roulette and thought like, how is it that anybody can play that, right? You watch it on movies or TV. And it just seems insane.

And we thought, what if we just cram that into a deck of cards? So there's a few guide cards, the bullets, in the deck. Those are the Exploding Kittens. And your goal is to not make it be your turn. You don't ever want it to be your turn. You want somebody else to pull the trigger on that gun and hope that they don't explode.

If you survive your turn, you get super powered. You get to skip your next turn or force somebody to go instead of you, or all kinds of crazy, insane hilarious cartoons that we packed full right into the deck. So it's one of those games, it takes you like 2 minutes to learn and 15 minutes to play.

ALLY GARFINKLE: Elan, pretty early on, "Exploding Kittens" kind of saw this massive growth and a lot of interest from investors. So can you talk about what being in that enviable position was like and how you thought about it?

ELAN LEE: Well, it certainly caught us off guard. We put "Exploding Kittens" up on Kickstarter to launch the company. And the goal was to raise $10,000. And in those 30 days, we raised almost $9 million instead and broke almost every Kickstarter record.

Since then, we've sold about 20 million copies of the game. And the company now has about 100 people. And we're just cranking out all kinds of new games. You can see on the screen, things like "Throw, Throw Burrito" and "Poetry for Neanderthals." And our whole mantra is we do not build entertaining games. We build games that make the people you're playing with entertaining. And that's really the focus for us.

So we were in this really amazing position, where because that struck such a chord with the audience, we sold a lot of games. And we continue to sell a lot of games. And so investors keep coming to us saying, we want to play too. And as a guy who started a bunch of companies, it's really nice to have people come to you with money instead of vise versa.

- Yeah, I bet. I bet. That's a good position to be in. Let's talk about the partnership with Netflix. Obviously, you've got the mobile games out there as well. But I have to tell you, when Netflix first came out and said, we're going to do games, a lot of people said, wait a second. This is a content platform, streaming platform, where does gaming fit into all of this? Talk to me about the strategy with "Exploding Kittens" specifically, and how you think it fits into that ecosystem.

ELAN LEE: Sure. So let's do the key word there is how I think. I don't work for Netflix, so I can't read their minds. But in discussions with them, what's been really interesting to them-- all of our discussions have revolved around this idea of, we already have a huge audience. Let's build an animated show around that and launch it on your gaming platform at the same time. What if there was a show and a game all on the Netflix platform all at once, so that you could move seamlessly from one platform to another mode of play within that same platform?

And that's been really interesting to build around, right? We're building games that use those same characters as are in the show. The show pushes things out to the game, round and round it goes. For the first time ever, Netflix is this amazing thing where you can passively watch a show, or lean forward and try the interactive version using those same characters and world.

ALLY GARFINKLE: You know, Elan, has-- how has starting to work with Netflix evolved how you think about your business, how you think about streaming? Is there anything that's really been new to you in that process?

ELAN LEE: We've never built a TV show before. This has been a brand new experience. What's amazing is Netflix is really good at this. And what they emphasize for us is, let's build a world-class team, world-class actors, world-class directors, producers, bundle all of that together so that we can make the best possible thing. We're used to working out of our garage, cranking out a bunch of games, doing our best, learning from our mistakes. It's a whole different world to work with world-class talent and produce just the best, best thing we can possibly make.

- And you said you've got Mike Judge and Greg Daniels on board. That was kind of at the top of the list of producers wanted on board for the show. You alluded to the fact that even before you had those discussions with Netflix, other streaming sites had kind of been circling around, looking at the gaming space as well. Is this the next phase that kind of unlocks more value, whether you're looking at somebody like an Amazon or some other competitors who are already in the space?

ELAN LEE: Right, well, it's-- things like this are really interesting to all of the streamers, because the hardest thing in the world to do is build a new audience around a platform. So if you can find properties that already have an audience, and you're just bringing them to life, that's so much-- that's such an easier challenge. And so a property like "Exploding Kittens" that already has so many millions of fans, but nobody knows what our characters sound like. Nobody knows what they move like. Nobody knows what world they live in.

The opportunity to do that and to escort that audience into the next phase of that world is incredibly attractive, because we've done most of the heavy lifting to establish the audience. Now, we just got to put on a show.

- And you've got a big shout out in the last earnings call. We'll see. We'll continue to follow. Looking forward to the show. Elan Lee, Co-founder and CEO of "Exploding Kittens," thank you so much for your time. And our thanks to Ally Garfinkle as well for joining in on the conversation.