Welcome to Nerdpreneur, where we have fun conversations with people making money from their nerdy passion. I'm joined, as always, by my co host, Frank. Hello. And today we have a very special guest. His name is Devon from startplaying games. Welcome to Nerdpreneur. Thank you for having me. I'm so stoked to be here, y'all. Awesome. We are stoked to have you here, man. So as we always start off our questions, Devon, what is your nerdy passion. Tabletop gaming. Absolutely love it.
Can't get enough of it. Love it. And I love how you said tabletop gaming and not just dungeons and dragons. It sounds to me like you cover a gamut of games, right. You know, before I even played D&D, I was. I remember this is actually how I got into tabletop gaming. I was like seven years old, maybe eight years old. My mother, she read this book to me. It was a choose your own adventure book, but there was a dice rolling component to it,
so it was like a solo rpg. And she would read it because those words were too big, I was too small, and I got to, like, roll the dice, and she would, like, tell me the outcome. It was so fun. That was like my first foray into gaming. And then, like, you know, d and D became a part of that later. But I mean, like, there's just. There's too many amazing games out there. So was that. Does that mean that your mom was the first game master for you? She was. My mom was my first game master. Wow.
Wow, nice. Thanks, mom. I've told this story so many times, I never realized that. That sounds like a pretty cool mom. That's awesome. Yeah, you can make a good argument for that, being your mom, being the first game master. Or, you know, I know some people listening are gonna say, but the book. The book really was the one telling the story, but. Oh, yeah, but I mean, like, she fudged roles. I was seven. You know, my bad decision. She's like, oh, you fell unconscious. You gotta do it again.
I think that's a. That's a house rule. If your mom's the game master, she can fudge the role. It was like. It was like gentle parenting and game mastering. It was like gentle game mastering. Did your mom play a part in your games growing up? That was the last time, which is funny to think about. This core memory got unlocked recently because people were like,
what was your experience? Actually, this was my first experience with gaming, and I completely had forgotten about it till a few years ago when something prompted it out of thin air. And I remembered, oh, yeah, that thing. That was really my first tabletop experience. That's like an inside out scene, the emotions interacting and stumbling on this core memory orbital. Absolutely. So start playing games or start playing dot games.
Can you explain a little bit, just for our listeners who maybe aren't in the tabletop space specifically, just, what is this business? Yeah, we are the Airbnb for tabletop gaming. If you've always wanted to play a game, but, you know, the schedule worked out with your friends or you don't know where to start. There are a bunch of professional game masters that use our platform to advertise their games where you can join and you can see the different play styles and the different
type of games they're running. Running. And you could join those games and then we kind of handle all of the organization stuff and then the GM just, you know, runs an amazing game. So you could stop wanting to play games and you could start playing games. See what I did there? That's a little tie in for name. That's why I named it that well. And what I love is that you acknowledge one of the biggest barriers for people is one they don't have a dungeon master or game master to run their game.
And the other side of it is the scheduling. You brought that up is like sometimes the time doesn't work. So many people I know run into that barrier where even when you get people ready to play who want to start playing and are committed to it, how do you find the time to actually do it? So it's consistent every single week or every single month here. My first question, I guess, diving into start playing games is that how do you find the game masters and is there a vetting process to that?
Yeah. So this might be a little long winded. So let me tell you how. That's what podcasts are for, right? So before start playing, I was running a lot of DD games. I had just kind of gotten back into it. I had played 3.5 and five e came out. I was like, oh, you know, I'm going to try out the new version. And so I had some friends together and it just kind of exploded. Like, I brought these new friends in. They loved it. And then I realized I was running maybe three, like, learn to play
games a week for friends. And then, you know, like two years later, someone was like, oh, my gosh, this is so much fun. My work would love this. Would you run one for, like, my coworkers at our office? And I was like, I don't know, your coworker. I don't want to do that. And thinking in my head, and then they said, you know, our budget for things like this is around dollar 500. And I was like, that's so weird. That's what I charge. Whoa, what a coincidence. And so I did this. It was a blast.
I had a lot of fun. I thought to myself, I wonder if more people would pay for a GM because I was just, I can't do all these games. And so I made a website and within like two, three weeks I had like another two bookings. And then the next month I had four bookings and it just started to grow from there.
And so I started writing all these games for people and it was like, you know, this mom and her three sons and she wanted to do like a family thing together with them, like team building events for, you know, like Google. And it became really, really fun. But then I ended up getting written up in Bloomberg Business Week and it was like called the rise of the professional dungeon master and it gave me all this press. It was really fantastic.
But then I was getting maybe six emails a week from other game masters who wanted to do what I had done. And it was hard. It wasn't easy because you had to know how to make a website and, you know, how to like, you know, do search engine optimization. There was a lot of things that, like, from my day job as a product manager and working at that, I could translate very easily into being successful in getting players.
GM's are great when it comes to the game, but there's all these other things you need to learn from accounting to building website. So I started like a Facebook group and then I started an email newsletter and I was just kind of collecting GM's together and sharing insights and ideas. And when I started to build, start playing, I already had 700 gm's on this newsletter that were interested in finding ways to make it easier to be a pro GM. So that's where I started.
And when you have 700 GM's, I think 100 signed up. And then things started to Grow and as we advertised, GM's would see this ANd like, wAit, this is a thing? And they would come to the website like, I want to be a GM. They're like, this is amazing. I've Always wanted to do this. And so we don't really advertise to GM's, we advertise to plAyers. And GM's see that? And they're like, I want to do That. I want to be a professional dungeon master.
I want to be a professional keeper, professional game master, any of those things. And we don't have a vetting process. We have what's like, your different type of reviews. Reviews are really important. We have verified reviews, we have unverified reviews. So you can tell, is this legitimate? But that means you can start. Even if you don't have a verified review from running a paid game yet, you can still say like, hey, these six people vouch for me.
Um, and then as you go on, you get more reviews as you have more players and they become verified because they played in paid games. Um, so that's currently how we use our vetting process is, you know, are there people that would vouch for you? Do you have players that love playing with you? What do they have to say? And, and I think, um, that's been really impactful, um, because a lot of GM's are like, wow, I didn't know my players felt this way till I asked them. That is so cool.
I have so many follow up questions that I'd love to dive into because you covered so much and I thought it was a great overview. First, I want to start with how did you get that Bloomberg article? Can you walk through that process of like, how did that happen? Yeah, so it had a little bit to do with the fact that I also create content online in the tabletop space. I have a studio called Total Party Chill. We do actual plays, podcasts, things like that.
That had my name out there a lot, and I was also one of the few people in the space that, like, had a website. It was easy to contact and there was a lot of content around me already. So when you say total party chill just in there, what is that? Sorry, is that like a, like a Facebook page or like, what is it? So, yeah, great question, total PI chill. We are a tabletop rpg studio here in San Francisco. And in fact, you know, for those that are watching this, I'll go ahead.
And this is the studio that I'm in right now. And this is where we produce. That's so cool. Tabletop content, things like D and D, actual plays or tabletop rpg podcasts. We also make little modules, things like that. So it was kind of my creative endeavor because I wanted a way to make stuff in tabletop because it interests me and I love it. And it was a hobby, but it became so much more.
But because there was already so much content out there, when the writers were looking for people in this story, it was very easy to find someone's like, oh, this person is a professional dungeon master. They're already advertising themselves. They have a website, they have this presence here. And so that's what prompted them to reach out to me. It already looked professional at that point because you had all the parts.
And a lot of times I always tell people this, make sure it's easy to get a hold of you if you're looking for press, right? You know, like make sure your DM's are open. Make sure that people can message you anywhere possible that you have an easy access email, and one day I just saw the email come through, and I immediately responded, yeah, of course. I would love to talk. I mean, I'm sure that that also blew up your bookings as soon as that article happened. Yeah, yeah, it was.
I think that fandom reached out first, and this is back when they owned d and D beyond, and then Nintendo reached out. And those are some of the really cool big clients, Facebook and Google as well. Yeah. Geez. Okay, so that took off shortly after the article because, I mean, from my perspective, when that article came out, I was still up here in Seattle, and this is kind of a hub for a lot of people, I find.
And not only because wizards of the coast is here, but just, it's a super nerdy city, and. And so that everyone was talking about that article. Yeah. Everyone's trying to become a pro DM, and everyone's trying to figure out what the appropriate rate is. So, I mean, we could go down the path of the pro Dm, and I'm not so sure. Or gate or gm even, but I'm not so sure we want to go down that path, necessarily. Yes, we do. Okay. Except for how everybody wants to know that. I know, I know.
But I want to talk about specifically how it overlaps with start playing, because how the value of start playing is tHat, like you said earlier, it takes away so much of the back end work that a GM may not be experienced in. You know, not every GM went to business school or, you know, project management or accounting. So what are some of the things that start play? Can I say start play, or do I have to say start playing? Oh, definitely. You have to have that Ing. Oh, yeah.
Oh, my gosh. Okay. Startplaying games. What are some of the things that. That it really adds and does for the GM? Yeah. So a huge one is AcTUallY getting you in front of players. We spent, you know, tens of thousands of dollars just advertising our games to players. So that's. I mean, that's one of the things that GM's are always saying, like, wow. Like, I just.
My HardesT thing was finding players, and that's because a lot of time, if you're looking for a game, um, people say, well, just go to DiScord. Just go to discord. Like, which is the most unhelpful advice ever. And. And the problem is, I've talked. We. We did a lot of, like, research and talked to people, like, how'd you find games before? Like, well, I'd go to discord, and then I'd maybe fill out like
a Google form or talk to someone. And then, like three to five weeks later, like, everyone was able to get into the game, but then it fell apart, like, you know, two weeks later and you're like, wow, that sounds terrible. And, you know, some of the same things with Reddit. And so we're like, okay, well, getting in front of players is one of the most important things pro GM needs. And so that's a major THIng we help out with. We have thousands of people come to the site every day.
Another thing is we ensure payment. So if someone tries to fraud a GM, then we'll cover that payment out of our own pocket. If we can't get the player to charge or the card didn't go through things like that. Um, on the same time, if the player feels like, hey, you know, like, you know, this Gm charged me, but the game never happened, we'll investigate that, too.
And if that's true, like, we know we cover the player, so we build trust in the sense that, like, you don't have to worry about, you know, um, uh, fraud when it comes to exchanging money. That's one of the big things that, like, make a marketplace work, is building that trust. How? I want to jump in real quick. Sorry. How often does something like that happen on the fraud side for player or gmdeh? Maybe 0.3%. Okay. Of. It's very small. I mean,
like out of was it. As of like, last week, our GM's have made over $7 million running games. It's wild. That's amazing. I know. Dollar signs. Dollar signs, yeah. How long have you guys been around based on that? Since 2020. September is when we launched. So in two years, really? Three years almost. You guys have created $7 million for professional GM's? Yeah. That's incredible. That's like, and it's such a huge, huge market. And really just starting right now, it feels like.
Absolutely. Wow. Do players get rated, too? We don't rate players. I think. I think there's a problem with the standard approach most people would explore on rating players. And we also like our, we. I think out of all the reviews we've had 150 negative reviews for GM's come through. Around 80% of those are weaponized. So, you know, like, kind of unfactual or someone is, like, purposely trying to, like, hurt a GM. So we have, like a Flag system. So the GM say, hey, can you review this?
And then we open up an investigation to see, like, hey, are these things tRue? And, you know, out of like, that, you know, the 150 like 80%. THat's something like 130 of those actual reviews. And, like, it's people that are like, going through ANd submitting like multiple times just trying to get something through. And we knew that, that as far as review systems, like, people will try to weaponize those.
THat's why we don't have currently a five star review system because that also doesn't help make a decision. So we see them as recommendations. This is why I recommend this GM. This is why I had good time playing with them. We definitely want reviews to be helpful and not harmful. We're exploring more personalization for GM's to have insights on players. Like, hey, this player often plays in horror games and they also have these badges because they've played in six different types of systems.
So we want to give value rather than open doors for something that could be toxic if leveraged by a handful of people. Yeah. Can you sort based on, say, age range or just like, I can imagine, like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm in my thirties. I want to play with people that are also mature and say, in their thirties versus, say, an 18 year old or something. Right? Like, is there a way to search that way ANd categorize my game? So there
are a few options you can do. RiGht now, the OnLy age range is like 18 and up. The BIG ThinG we notice, though, is people who join games with GM's who are really explicit on the adventures they're running are what make a good match. I've seen a lot of, like, Match Systems before and I think they dive down a Little too hard for the exact match. And when a GM is very clear on the type of adventures they're running, it draws the right group
and that is really where it shines. So if a GM can be really clear about, like, hey, this is the type of games I run. This is the type of adventure I'm running. You'll get people who like, oh, I'm, I'm in my thirties and I want to play this. But you also get people that are in their 20, you know, like mid twenties that are like, perfect for that group because that Playstyle or the adventure really calls to them and they want to participate in that. Makes sense.
So how much can a pro GM really make doing this? Let's see. I think I saw someone who says that by this year they're going to try to push six figures. Wait, yeah, 100,000. They're trying to shoot for 100,000. Whoa. Um, but you know, the kind of the Average for, like, full time GM's is anywhere from like 40 to like, 80,000 is kind of the range I'm seeing, uh, like the full time GM's, uh, taken. Yeah, I was just. What, what kind of hours is that for them, do you think? In, in just the game time?
Not even prep time. Yeah. So, uh, that I feel that's around ten games a week is kind of the average full time GM's are doing, um, uh, between seven and ten. Now, I knew one was doing 14 and she dialed back to ten. And that's also because prep is different for every GM. And I feel when you're, when you become a pro gym, you try to figure out how to be efficient with your prep, but still make your games amazing. Right.
And then there's also a number of gyms that they will run published material, but they know the published material so well that they can take any kind of curve balls that players throw. And so I know one gym, they were running like seven cursive Strahd games, but they were all vastly different.
But they knew everything that was in the material and everything they added from, like, third party resources so they could run the game without having to really look at a lot of notes outside of what their players did. Yeah, it's almost like being a teacher who's already got their lesson plan. They know how to teach that course. And then every year, once you figure it out, then you can teach that same grade every single year with different students. Which kind of makes sense, right?
Tailoring it for those students? Yeah. But the follow up to that is just, well, how long does the paid session really last for a GM? And also, how much are they charging? GM's are charging anywhere from like ten to $40 a session. THat's the average price on the site is around $20 a session per player. Per player, per player per session. And then the average game length is 3 hours. So most games around two to three hour games on the site. Yeah. Sounds about a good time range for me.
If I'm going to sit in front of my computer for 3 hours. That sounds appropriate. I know, right? I mean, I mean, an hour at the bar is going to run me at least dollar 25, I feel. At least. I mean, I go to Alamo Drafthouse to watch a movie, and I'm not leaving there under dollar 50. Cause I'm going to have a burger, a beer, the movie ticket itself.
So, actually, I think I remember hearing some marketing in the early days of start playing along those lines of, you know, spend an evening online, you know, you're going to spend less than you would out at the bar. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's true. I'll spend that much playing with my friends just because we're drinking. Right. Or we're adding snacks or ordering in from a restaurant or something. Like, you probably would spend about the same amount just going to your friend's place, honestly.
That's great. So, and it's all online, I'm assuming, right? Like people are playing in like a Zoom room or do you guys have your own platform for that or how does that work? So, I mean, we definitely let GM's decide, like, how those games are happening. But games are happening, you know, Zoom, Google, meet Discord, you know, role or roll 20 foundry. Like, they're happening all over.
Gotcha. So any of the kind of VTT systems out there can be, you're not standardized or tell someone what to use, but the GM sort of chooses the tools that work for them. Exactly. Because, you know, people always, you know, GM's, that's one of the big questions I get asked. You know, every week I do this thing called the Onboarding and it's where I like, tell GM's best practices, tips and tricks, insights and a full overview of the site as a GM. And I always get the question,
what VTT should I use? I'm like, what VTT can you run your best game ever with? That's the one, you know, if you run games, if theater the mind, you feel this is your great game and you don't really like vtts, then that's how you should run your games. Because GM's shouldn't be aiming to attract every player. They should be aiming to attract the right players for their Playstyle. And there's, there's no such thing as like, there will always be more players than GM's.
So it's not like, well, I need to get the most players. Like, no, no, like, however you run your best game, if you continue to run your best game, you're going to grow in your player base. Hey Chris, coming at you. This is not an ad. We'll get back to the episode in just a second. Thanks for listening. Frank and I love doing these interviews with nerdpreneurs. We don't have anything to sell you, but we do want to build an audience. So if you want to help us and our guests get more people,
there's three things you can do. One, follow our social mediapreneurpod on Twitter and Instagram. Two, you can leave a positive review on Apple Podcasts. Don't know why, but these really move the needle. And lastly is just tell a friend about us. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. We don't run ads. We're not going viral on TikTok. So if you've received value from our conversations, share it with one person. Do it right now. I'll even pause. Awesome. You're the best. Now back to the episode.
So, from my personal experience, I tried out start playing probably a year ago, a little over a year ago. Barry, the lead. Okay, I love this. It's not a very long story, which is one of the reasons I didn't start it off with, but the. The game I wanted to run was Star Trek adventures, and I was super excited to get that going. And I had already played with Chris and a couple other friends, and we'd done the starter set, and I was like, okay, I think I'm ready to take this out there. There's
not a lot of games online, though. At the time, there was just one gm. Yeah. And he was running, like, eight games that he had on the site. And so I was like, I'm gonna throw one out there. And I was like, you know what? I'll do $5 per person just to get things started. And. And I set it out for, like, three weeks in advance, and. And I do not have a following online. I didn't really, I wasn't pushing it anywhere. And I just said, like, I want her to see how this goes.
And I didn't get any bites, ultimately, so, and that's not. There's a lot of things that go into this as factors, and that's what I was hoping you could talk about, because I know a lot of it also comes down to the GM and how they push it to their following, and if they already have established people that they've put played with. So what are some of the tips and tricks you suggest for GM starting out on start playing. All right, so the number one thing, and if you're GM on, start playing.
You're listening this. You already know what I'm going to say. You already know it. I say it every day to every new person that joins our discord. Have you done the onboarding? Um, and that onboarding is that call that people, you know, there's a few other people on our team that also run them every week, too. But this is our meeting where I give, like, the best tips and tricks. I'm like, hey, this is how you should write your description. This is what we've seen work in surveys.
I also have a blog post on startplaying, too, about these 22 tips. But it's everything from the images used, the titles you use, to the description of your game. All these things definitely help lead towards getting a fully booked game. We've done the numbers and if you have done the Onboarding, your average time to running a paid game is, I think, 15 or 16 days. If you haven't, it's somewhere like, I think, 37 days for your first paid game. So it cuts that off in half.
And then the retention that GM's have of players on the site is like 100% increase versus those who didn't do the Onboarding. How long is the onboarding? It's about an hour. So that sounds like a good investment for anybody looking to be a pro GM. 1 hour and then you're going to basically more than double your likelihood of results. Yeah. And it's, and it's. With a bunch of GM's, it's like,
it's like 30 GM's. And me, and like, I. I explained the tools, but there's also like some psychology stuff. Like when people write their game descriptions, you should write them like the back of a book. Like you're reading the back of like a Sanderson novel or, you know, something like that. Because you want to put first person prose or like character prose, I say instead of player prose.
So a great example of that, and I might be going on a tangent here, is you can have your player pros, which is like you and other players are going to try to uncover the evil plot that the council has put forth for the city and save it before its destruction. Rather, you want to do something that's like, you've always known the council was corrupt, but you never thought their blade would be pointed in your direction.
Now as time is mo, as now as time is losing itself, you have to save the city before it crumbles to the deceit and greediness of the council members. Like one really tells you the player, like, this is what your character is going to be experiencing. It gets you immersed. We've seen even just like in surveys, how well that does. And then it gives chills.
And that's the key to being a good GM, right, is you don't just tell people, oh, as a player, you can do this and this, you just go into it and start immersing them. And when you do that, people become immersed in your game. And so that makes a lot of sense in terms of the way you want to market it. It's more like gyms have these skills. They just need be, they just need to be reminded, like, well, this point, they're like, oh, oh, yeah.
And then it, like, it makes so much sense once you start putting in practice. This seems so very similar to dating online in a weird way. And I don't know if anyone's ever brought that to the table, but I. Bring it up every time. Yeah, it's very like, a lot of guys don't have a problem with them. They have a problem with marketing, and they're not effectively marketing themselves in the online dating space. So that's why their time to date is so high.
They need to change up their marketing strategy, get the right pictures, the right bio. And once you have these components, you wind up making results happen. Devon, where can people go to get that onboarding training? Oh, okay. So the moment you join as a GM, you get an email with a link to it. And then every other future email you get that's GM related. I also, at the bottom of them say, like, have you taken this yet? Have you taken this yet? You should take it.
And then if you, and once you finalize your profile and start playing, it invites you to the GM only discord. And then you'll probably be asked that several times once you're in the discord as well. Because like, wait, how do I do this? I'm like, have you taken the onboarding? GM's know that that is like the inside joke is Devon, the number one thing he asks people is, has you taken the onboard? Okay, so it's built into the process already quite, quite thickly. That's great.
You're not hiding it. I'm always pushing for more too quickly, though. You know, we're talking about, you know, like online dating and things like that. There's this theory of self opt out. And it's something I say GM's should really push for this. This woman did this kind of experiment where she wore the shirt that promoted her vegan ideology. I think it was like, if you kill animals, I'll kill you. And then something vegan, something really intense.
But it was on her first image, so people that saw that, that had an ideology that did not match hers would immediately opt out. And so the amount of matches she had to amount of conversations that led to a date were higher because she was so clear about her own ideology. If you do that in a marketplace environment or with your games where you say like, hey, this is, this is the type of game I'm having. People that don't enjoy. Those games are going to opt out.
So when you make yourself appeal to as many people as possible, you're going to get a bad fit sometimes. But if you're very explicit in like, hey, this is the type of game I'm going to run. This is what to expect. This is the fun that I think is fun. This is how I run mine. Then more likely you're going to find people that are like, yep, I'm going to join this because this is the exact thing I want. And you get a higher.
So that's why we do a lot when we tell people, really explain and push the type of way that you like to play because you're going to have more long term players that way. Great point. Yeah, I know you've got a full hour and you said, I think, 22 of these sort of keys to make a pro GM or get you results on start playing games. You've covered a couple of these keys so far and similar to the way a dating profile, the keys would be your picture,
your profile and your opening line. Yeah, I think we've got two of those. Could you give us one more of these keys? Well, the big thing is, I say never use logos or illustrations for your profile picture. Always use a picture of yourself because people like to play games with people. The idea of gaming is you are creating a human connection and you're building a mini community with people. Your photo should be someone that you would want to play a game with.
And so I would say like a well lit, non grainy photo that is inviting. We actually even did a test of photos that get the most clicks and we had like the same GM, same profile. And one was like the Moody, they're like, I am the Dungeon Master. My fingers are pressed together because I'm conspiring against you. And the other one was like someone just like laughing, holding up a die, you know, like a one eyed eye. And it was like three x. The amount of click
through on the Smiling GM. So, you know, that's a big one there too. Despite the advice, beware the Smiling GM. That profile actually worked. There's two types of smiling GM's though, right? We have to be honest about that. That's right. That's right. That's very cool. That's great insight. And real quick, before we turn away from. Because eventually we're going to start talking about the history, at least that's what I'd really like to start talking about how this business came to be.
But on the technical side still, for those aspiring pro gms, what is the percentage that start playing tends to take? Oh, we take a, currently, we take a 10% cut from the GM booking. Okay, so run a $20 game. The GM gets 18, and we get two. Okay. And then that, that money, we've already established all the things that goes towards, like, finding the players,
helping them manage their games in a space. And because I remember recently, uh, once again, Star Trek adventures, I've been looking for a game to play in general, and I've been sent through the ringer of discords. I'm on my fourth discord group. Everyone, they've said, like, hey, you gotta go to this discord if you want to find a group. And I'm like, okay, join it. And then I post in there player
looking for a game. You know, what if you, someone then tells me in a DM, if you really want to find a playable group and join it. Right now, it's this one. And I'm like, okay, fine. And everyone's been super helpful and super kind, so they've been awesome. But I'm just like, this is ridiculous. Like, start playing. Playing really needs, like, has been a need for this. Oh, my gosh. We got five out of seven seats starting tonight at five. No, tomorrow at 05:00 p.m.
for Star Trek. For Star Trek. I mean, there's quite a few games going on right now. There's one tomorrow, too, at 04:00 p.m. oh, my gosh. Is it the same one guy that was doing this a year ago? Jerry? No, this is Doug. I don't remember the name, but I'll bet you it was Doug. That guy was like a machine. Yeah, we got Doug. We got Aram. We got Jerry. Yes. I love Star Trek adventures. That's such a fun system.
Yeah, I'm excited to play the dune version of it, actually, because it's the same guys, but just a different setting. Yeah, that two d twenty. Yeah. I'm reading through the dune tabletop role playing book right now, which is a beautiful book, and excited to, to potentially. Run my first game, adventures in the imperium, right? Yes. That's the way game tomorrow morning, too. Might be worth actually playing a couple. Before I, before I do that, I'm.
Gonna load you up with a bunch of credits by the end of this podcast and year. Start playing accounts. Love it. Love it. So what are credits? What do you mean? So we have, people could buy gift cards, and me as one of the founders, I could just, like, drop money in your account to spend on games. If you ever find me in person, I do this. I will. I was at the bar last night and met this guy. He's like, what's sign up for account right now?
I'll drop in three credits in your account if you want to start, you know, because that's essentially, it's like my walking advertisement is if I, if you find me in person, I'll give you credits to your start playing account. Oh, be careful. You might get a lot of people hunting you down. So I heard on nerdpreneur that you'll. Give credits, but, yeah, you just gotta find me. It's like a Waldo game and tabletop. This is the tabletop daddy, right? I love it. Credit daddy.
So I do want to get, like, I'm curious. Going back, we got into, like, what the logistics of it now, and it's clearly been building and grown. Was there a mental shift you had to make to turn this from being sort of a hobby into a business? Yeah, so I, you know, I've done a number of businesses in, in my, you know, many moods of life, but I decided I wouldn't do another endeavor unless I had a partner.
And so I had an idea for what could have been start playing, you know, like maybe a handful of years before start playing started. But I was like, I just, I can't undertake this. I need, I need a partner. And having been a founder before, you know, a startup or starting a small business, it's really hard when you're doing it solo. And when you have someone that you're doing it with, it's just a lot easier to not burn out and keep steam.
And that's really why startplaying has succeeded, is, you know, my other co founders and being able to build this with. Them, how did you pick a good co founder and know that that was the right person? Because I'll just say from a context, I went through a very similar process of starting a lot of podcasts with myself or maybe the wrong people that weren't as committed or excited about it. But I was looking for someone that I call my spirit warrior.
And I feel like when I found Frank, he was, he checked off a lot of the boxes for the spirit warrior aspect of it. And I'm curious, how did you find that process, to know you had found yours? So y'all familiar with product Mark, product founder Fit? No. So let's say that you all want to start a healthcare company, but you've never been in healthcare. That's a bad product founder fit.
But let's say that you're a doctor and you've kind of left your practice, and there's this healthcare idea you had, and you know a lot about the healthcare system and you also know a lot about the body and healthcare in general. That's a great product founder fit. The person knows the product, and that's a big thing, especially when you're talking to VC's or you're talking to angel investors that like, oh, you know, this space. Me and my co founder Nate, we are a great product founder Fit.
So it was March 17, 2020. I had just turned off the news to San Francisco announcing that they were going to be in a lockdown for the next three weeks. And I got a phone call, and it was my now co founder Nate. And he was inquiring to hire me to be a GM for him and his friends. Nate comes from the player side. Him and his friends would rotate every month who was going to be the GM, and nobody wanted to do it.
And then people who were assigned to do it would kind of bail on it, and they're like, let's just play a board game instead. But everyone wanted to play D and D, but nobody wanted to be at the GM. And so Nate was in a startup accelerator called Y Combinator, and Y combinator is this really prestigious startup accelerator, but he was doing it for like, this fintech product that he actually didn't like. And he was thinking about switching.
And he had this idea, like, well, what about hire a GM thing? And he wondered if that would even work. So he saw that in San Francisco, there's this guy named Devon who had all this press about being a pro GM. And so he called me to hire me to GM, but he also wanted to ask me a bunch of questions just to get an idea about the market and the space. And we were on the phone for 6 hours that night. Like, he literally just called the number
on the website and I answered. I was like, I don't recognize this number. And we spent forever talking. I told him, I was like, hey, I was actually trying to build something like this. And he had these ideas. So we talked forever. The next day, he was like, he called me up and he said, do you want to build this startup with me? And I was like, absolutely. And I.
And that's really how it started. And I said, we have like three to six weeks of time on this lockdown where we can't go out, so I might as well work on a project. Not knowing that would be 16 months. We weren't expecting it to explode because of COVID We were expecting that in person would be a big thing. We learned so much in those first few months of building an MVP product, a minimum viable product. But it really came from that one phone call.
Like answering the phone to an unknown number turned into a six hour phone call, which turned into six weeks of working on a product, which turned into a 6.5 million investment from one of the largest VC's in the world. Yeah, I actually wanted to ask you about that at one point about that. How that. When did you guys know that that funding was something that you needed?
Because as from my understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but that funding is not what you started with and that funding is more of in 20, that's from 2022. Yeah, yeah. So that's two years after you guys started. Right? So, yeah, so that was our seed round. Our. We did what's called an angel round, which is where you get, like, a handful of angel investors that invest in you. We also had a small investment from Y Combinator.
When you are accepted into Y combinator, you get, you know, around like $100,000, something around that much to build your product. And that's so, like, you can hire people, you can focus on it. You're not doing another job. But I was still working. I was working two jobs, a founder at this, and I was doing my day job until November 2020 when we closed our last angel. And that was just like a small amount so we could hire, like, two more people and really build out what
the company's going to be when we. There's this thing called demo Day at Y Combinator. That's where a bunch of angel investors and VC's and watch the product pitch. And you get like a minute, I think, maybe two minutes, to explain what your product is. And then if people like your product or they put a thumbs up, you get connected with them in an email afterwards. We were one of the most popular things out of that batch because we also.
Everything else in that batch is like a SaaS product or like, API integrations tool, you know, so we were like, everyone's like, this is kind of cool, but no one knew if it had legs. So a few. Actually, one of. One of our angel investors was one of my first clients as a pro GM. Whoa. He hired me to drive up to Tahoe to run a game for him and his family because they were there on vacation. And I was like, it's gonna be really expensive, man. Like, I, you know, I'm like, having a hotel room.
I'm about to drive out. He's like, whatever, I don't care. It'll be 1200. He's like, you sure. Love that question. So, yeah, so, you know, it was, it was angel round. A bunch of people that believed in the product and a 16 reach out to us when some other folks were chatting with us about a seed round about investing and a 16. Incredible. I'm so happy that they led around and I think it closed in about two weeks. They met, met with Nate. We went over one sheet of data, and
within a week we had a term sheet. Whoa. Yeah. It happened very, very fast. Yeah. That stuff normally takes so much longer. And you mentioned angel investors in the beginning, and that is kind of a unicorn situation, as I understand it. Because normally when you say angel investor, you mean they weren't taking any equity, right? Oh, no, no, they do. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, the angel investor, usually it's just such a. More of a long shot when you're an angel investor, but you're putting in less and you're usually getting a little bit more. But it's usually, there's barely any data to decide if you want to invest yet because the company's brand new. I see. Yeah. I was curious when you had to do that two minute pitch, how did you think about it and approach that? So only one of us could do it. Nate did it, and he let the data speak for it himself.
That's what's great about Nate is he is really good at explaining. He's a data scientist, but he's really great at explaining the data, walking through it, and it makes everything sound. I mean, he puts logic behind everything, so it's really hard to argue with the results. It's hard to argue with numbers. Yeah. You know, when you have the dice roll a certain way, you can't argue with it. There's something very fair about that. Right, exactly. Well, it makes.
I guess it makes sense. Yeah. If you. If you only have two minutes, focus on the data and the numbers, because that's what investors will be looking at. And if it's on an up trajectory, then it. And it sounds, I guess, like you were. Guys were probably the coolest. It's weird when D and D is the coolest thing in the room, but it kind of sounds like you guys were the coolest thing in the room that day. Yeah, it really was. You know, and so, you
know, that. That felt fun. And, like, you know, there's no part of me that doesn't think that tabletop gaming is going to be is only going to grow. You know, I go to a lot of conventions where I do this talk about the future of tabletop. And the thing I remind people is, what else do you do in your day to day life that isn't reading a book or solving a problem at work where you use your imagination and tell me when you use your imagination last for fun with other contemporaries, other peers?
It doesn't happen. That's why this game is so sticky. We don't experience the state of play as adults like we did when we were young, and there's not a reason for that. And when it happens again, it clicks and people like, wow. What? I want to do this all the time now. And it's one of the stickiest hobbies. Yeah, we're going to go ahead and do random rolls here. So, like I was saying earlier, these are silly, less serious. So, yeah, go ahead and roll the d 100.
Okay. Also, can I just say, y'all are, like, fantastic. This has been such a wonderful interview, you guys. Like, thanks. Really. It's super awesome having you on here. I mean, you're bringing the fire, man. Let's see. There we go. We got 86. Oh, classic. If you could instantly learn to play another musical instrument moderately well, what would you choose? This is a fantastic question. So thinking about it, do the breakdown. Right. The moderate l guitar
is really good. Portable, played everywhere. But then you're the Wonderwall guy, and I don't want to be the Wonderwall guy. I would like to be the piano guy. I think if he could tickle the pearly whites, I think that's kind of, that's the vibe that feels. I have a friend that does this, and he could just go up to a piano and just, like, play a little and kind of sing along with, like, that's too cool. It's so cool. And there are pianos in cool places, too.
It's always at, like, a nice restaurant or a cool hotel or some weird bar. But you don't have to carry it with you everywhere. You're right. Like a guitar guy. You always have to have, oh, I'm gonna bring out my guitar now. This guy plays guitar. We could tell. Yeah. All right, go ahead and roll another one, please. Three. What is your favorite snack item to bring to a nerdy get together? Ooh, pizza. It's not a snack, but I love. I think pizza is the ultimate breaking bread food.
It's meant to be shared. It's designed to be shared. The logo for total party chill is a slice of pizza, because I feel like pizza is so intrinsic to being around a table and, like, playing and breaking bread. I think it's one of the best foods ever designed. I went all the way to Italy just to confirm it. It is. So what pizza toppings do you pick for a party of many people? Well, if you got vegetarians, you do, like, you know, cheese and mushroom.
If you got omnivores, I'm a classic pepperoni guy, but I'm not a pizza elitist. If you want to put pineapple on yours, go for it. All right, listen, whatever makes. I'm just. I'm gonna. I'm a pizza enthusiast. Whatever makes you happy with your pizzas, I'm gonna support. Love it. Well, let's go ahead and switch things over to random. Sorry, I switch things over to rapid fire. First one right out of the gate. Star Trek or Star wars? Ooh, Trek. Excellent. Yoda or Obi Wan?
Obi Wan. Favorite Star Trek. Captain Cisco. Yes. Wow. Yeah. DS nine. Yeah. I could go on a tangent, but I won't. Right there. Yeah, that was the correct answer. Very good. Zombie apocalypse. Weapon of choice. Spearhead. Good. Good call. Good call. Yeah. Do you need that? You need that length. You need the distance. Keep them at a distance. Yeah. Favorite race to play in World of Warcraft? Cause I'm betting you did.
Ooh. Um. Oh, you know what? Honestly, I don't even know what they all are, but I'd probably be, like, an elf or something. Like, I. Something that isn't this, like, I'm the big, burly guy, so, like, I'm like, I'll be like, a little, like, a little elf or a little. A little halfling guy. One of those. The night elves were the most popular when wow broke, it was just everyone. Two thirds of the alliance people were night elves. Night elves.
What's so funny is you want to play the elf because you have the big dwarven beard. And funnily enough, the last thing I ever want to play is an elf. And I think it's because I can't grow facial hair. I'm always. Give me the orcs, give me the dwarves. I want someone who can get that hair. I'm six'three, too, so I always play little guys. It's one of those classic things. Yeah, I'm six'four, so I'm like dwarf, halfling, gnome. Perfect.
Every role player has a typical alignment that they gravitate towards. What is yours, I would say. Actually, I like to use the old Marvel RPG's alignment, which is responsibility and they had the diff. Like, this is Batman's. This is Iron Man's. This is Spider Man's. And one of Spider Man's was responsibility. And I think that is the one that I hold to. When you are responsible, when you kind of pledge something, you want to uphold that. And I
see that more than I see laws, you know? Like, of course you have to follow laws, but, like, what is the. What is the responsible thing to do? That's really good. I've never heard that, but I'm going to look into that. Yeah, that's a little plug for the Marvel RPG system. It's like the old one. It's like the one from the nineties. Wow. Alignment systems were always kind of a cool aspect to these different tabletop rpg's. Yeah. I want to get you back with us so we can talk about
alternative tabletop role playing games. Like, that was one of the things that you and I first started talking about. We could do a much smaller episode where we just like alternatives that people who are potentially leaving D and D looking
for something different. And, of course, we can talk about how it's available on start playing, but I really want to not only learn for myself, but I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that really want to see what are the other ones out there, what's best for me. There's so many cool systems, and, like, because the thing is, a lot of people, they try to make D and D fit, like, an idea, but there's so many, like, there's
so many games. You're like, oh, my gosh, this is like, this fits the fiction. This does so well. And when you start playing, it becomes fun all over again. It's like, oh, when you start learning new games, it feels so good. Yes. Because they happen to bring their own thing, like Star Trek adventures. You actually. They've done it where you feel like you're actually in an episode. It is so good at feeling like I'm on a ship. I'm firing the phasers. I'm down there being the diplomat. Right.
I'd be excited to talk nerdy with you for a little bit about those. Well, thank you so much for doing this, Devon. This was such an awesome interview. We got so many great insights, and I can't wait for people to hear it. Where can people find you, support you, and start playing games? Yeah. So you could find. Start playing games for all your groups, games and game master needs at startplaying games. And if you want to see more about me and total party chill.
You can find me on Twitter, Devon Chulik and then you can find everything you need about total pride chill@totalpriceill.com. Dot that's awesome. Thanks so much. And as always, everybody, keep it nerdy. You just finished the free version of this nerdpreneur interview with Devon from startplaying games. We spoke to Devon for another 45 minutes where we covered more on how he landed that seed funding.
What drives him as a nerdpreneur? How to to charge more for your games as a pro GM, his definition of a nerd, a bunch more random roles and rapid fire questions, plus his reaction to the OGL crisis with Wizards of the coast and Hasbro. You can get access to the full version of this episode by going to patreon.com nerdpreneur and become a member of our awesome Nerdpreneur board. Thanks again for listening and keep it nerdy.