Elan Lee, Co-Founder, Exploding Kittens 

Elan Lee is the Co-Creator and Founder of the tabletop games company, Exploding Kittens. Since the company’s inception, he has been responsible for leading the company and designing most of the company’s games, totaling more than 100 titles. Under his leadership, Exploding Kittens has sold more than 70 million games, in 30 different languages, to over 50 different countries since its founding in 2015. 

Before founding Exploding Kittens, Lee was the Chief Design Officer at Xbox Entertainment Studios.  Prior to that, he was the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Fourth Wall Studios as well as co-founding 42 Entertainment (the company behind the Alternate Reality Games: I Love Bees, Nine Inch Nails – Year Zero, and The Dark Knight). Lee began his career at the Microsoft Games Studio where he was a Lead Designer on the original Xbox. 

A 30 year veteran of the games industry, Lee has designed many of the top selling tabletop games in the world, is a writer for reality show Survivor, holds the record for most backers on a Kickstarter campaign, and invented the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) genre.

He has won a Primetime Emmy for his series Dirty Work, the Game Innovator of the Year award for Exploding Kittens, a Peabody Award for the world’s first Alternate Reality Game, and an IndieCade Trailblazer Award for a distinguished career in interactive entertainment. He has also won multiple awards for Best Game of the Year, Best Advertising Campaign of the Year, Best Idea of the Year, and Most Innovative Retailer.

Also, his mother thinks he is a very nice boy.