Cards Against Humanity's Founders Are Less Concerned With Balance Sheets Than Making Each Other Laugh The founders definitely have a different way of thinking, and they don't understand why that is weird.
By Linda Lacina
How Success Happens is a podcast featuring polar explorers, authors, ultra marathoners, artists and more to better understand what connects dreaming and doing. Linda Lacina, BIZ Experiences.com's managing editor, guides these chats so anyone can understand the traits that underpin achievement and what fuels the decisions to push us forward. Listen below or click here to read more shownotes.
Cards Against Humanity is known as a profane, dark and politically tinged "party game for horrible people." The concept is simple: one person picks a card -- for instance, "What is that smell?" -- and the others choose the best answer from their hand. It can be awkward, uncomfortable and yet, very hilarious. It's definitely not the traditional card game but either is the company.
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For many years, Cards Against Humanity was run by eight friends-turned-founders who kept their day jobs while running the card game as a side hustle, even as it gained traction. (It has sold out numerous times on Amazon and at other stores.)
The founders are still with the company -- one that's run as a collective with no hierarchy. Cards Against Humanity does hardly any traditional advertising, and the ones they do are over-the-top. Case it point: Its Super Bowl ad featured only a potato with the word "advertisement" written on it.
And while planned stunts like digging a massive hole in the ground snag attention, other efforts fly under the radar, like the scholarship the company funds for women pursuing STEM careers and the millions it has raised for causes like internet privacy and government transparency.
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In this week's How Success Happens podcast, we talk to two of its founders, Ben Hantoot and Max Temkin, on the company's approach to running a business that's less concerned with balance sheets than finding ways to make each other laugh or do what just feels natural to the business. In the process, they push back on things they find ridiculous about startup culture.
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