Entrepreneurship Journey of a 12 Year Old Kid

I am a 12-year-old kid that lives in Los Altos, California. During the covid-19 pandemic, I got really bored at home. There was no in-person school, no meeting friends, no vacation, no travel, no extracurricular activities, nothing. Just plain boredom! It was hard for me to be ripped of my freedom and all the excitement in life!

One thing that kept me busy was playing board games with my little sister. Although we both fight a lot with each other, playing games together brings us closer. Playing a handful of classic games over and over again became very boring. One day, I thought about starting my own business of an original & exciting card game. Having a business was a great way for me to focus my energy and efforts on something positive instead of sitting around the house. Having a business teaches responsibility and good money sense. Although it was not a typical silicon valley technology idea of building an IOS app for chatting with friends and family or a voice assistant technology (these are the tech projects I did in my spare time), I felt strongly about pursuing my card game business to make life a bit more fun. I had always dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur and this was my chance to fulfill my dream. And here begins the journey of an entrepreneur!

I thought of many different ideas for an original card game, and finally selected the one which seemed creative, fun, and exciting with many twists and unexpected turns. One would think that once a person has a vision, it’s easy to turn it into a product. That’s not at all true. The fun ride starts now.

I started writing down my vision for the new card game on a google doc. A lot of questions came up about the rules of play, how many different types of cards should be there in the deck, what are the different card powers, actions, powers, and combinations, the list goes on and on. I imagined the game virtually in my mind, came up with solutions, and tackled everything persistently one by one.

Once the vision was nailed down, I was ready to create the digital cards. I researched the different tools available online and selected Canva for designing the cards. Designing the cards was no small undertaking. It involved selecting catchy card names, brief descriptions, power, card colors and a unique image for each card. There was a lot of back and forth in selecting the final design for each card including the box and rulebook. Once the cards were designed, I printed the cards and played a few games to test the game. After a few iterations, the first mock-up of the game was finally ready.

Now comes the next challenging phase of turning my mock-up game into an actual sellable game. I called many different vendors in the US in the printing industry. However, all the vendors I contacted were in the business of printing visiting cards or posters, none in the board game industry. After thinking through the problem and researching, I created a free account on Alibaba and searched for manufacturers who specialize in board games or card games. Surprisingly, there were hundreds of manufacturers available on the platform. I selected a dozen manufacturers based on reviews, quality of their work product, years of experience, and cost and contacted them. I submitted the final design to the selected manufacturers to get a quote for the sample and high volume order. Things were on the roll now. BUT all the manufacturers rejected my design due to the low resolution of images and size mismatch. I created the mock-ups again with high-resolution better quality images and adjusted the sizes. The updated design was re-submitted to the potential manufacturers. Finally, I got price quotations from 5 manufacturers and selected the one with great quality, great reviews, lowest minimum order, and reasonable pricing.

I negotiated the price and ordered 3 samples. After the order was shipped, I was still very nervous about the quality. I checked the mail every day to get my hands on the sample games. One week flew by, no games in the mail as yet. One sunny day, I was playing in the backyard, when UPS dropped off a package in my front yard. My sister ran to the door and quickly picked up the package and opened it. Bummer, I wanted to open it but well it happens. I took out the games from the box and was super excited to see beautiful games better than I expected. I started jumping with joy and felt proud of my achievement.

Now it’s the time to do the most challenging part of the whole process which was selling the games. There are many ways and tools to sell the games and I decided to start with pre-sales at Kickstarter. Pre-sales means selling the games before manufacturing them. It is a good way to test the market, judge interest level, get early feedback, and know the demand of the product before spending lots of money. The Kickstarter campaign is ‘all or nothing’ meaning the seller gets the sale proceeds only if the goal is fully reached, otherwise the collected proceeds are refunded back to the buyers. I set the goal at $1,000 and I had to sell about 50 games in 4 weeks to reach my goal. I started calling my friends and family to support my campaign at Kickstarter. I had to be almost obnoxious to ask for support from anyone I meet online or in person to reach my goal. I informed my school faculty to help spread the word. Hard work paid off! I sold $300 worth of games in one week; $700 more to go in 3 remaining weeks. The goal was moving along slowly but an unfortunate thing happened. One supporter backed out and I felt crushed — Bummer! I kept trying harder and harder to sell my game. I sold enough games in 3 weeks to complete my campaign successfully but there is one week more to go, hoping no one backs out at the last minute. On Sunday, the campaign ended with $1,050 in the campaign collection. I made it. Hooray!

While I was selling the games, I got some early feedback from neighbors and friends. Based on the feedback, I updated the design and added some surprise cards in the deck which was not advertised.

I can finally start my business. A business is a business, whatever the age of the person in charge. A business involves a lot of legal formalities. I researched what those formalities are and created a list that includes registering a legal entity in California. I decided to create an LLC in California and now I needed to think of a business name. I brainstormed many different ideas and identified 15–20 good and reasonable business names. Most of the names were already registered. Luckily, one business name was still available in California, Novus Innovation LLC and I decided to register my business under this name.

After the business was registered, I figured out the other kinks such as getting a unique barcode for the game and registering the trade name for the words “Battle Timz” in the US. I accomplished all of these steps, one by one.

I was now ready to place the order for my games. I contacted the manufacturer and placed the order. To my surprise, the manufacturer increased the price by 30%, I was not happy. I tried to negotiate the price down to the earlier committed one, but the manufacturer did not budge as their cost had increased. Half-heartedly, I placed the order and waited patiently for 4 weeks. Finally, I got confirmation that the games were shipped via ocean. 4 more weeks flew by and the shipping status remained the same — in the ocean. I was now getting impatient. Will the games ever come? Finally, the games arrived at the port. Phew! All the stress for nothing. The games were delivered by UPS in about a week. I was super excited and happy. The quality of the games was really nice, the box was sturdy and even individually wrapped.

I created an Amazon account and posted the game there so kids and adults can play this friendly game and have fun. The name of the game is ‘Battle Timz’ and it autocorrects to Battle Time when searched on Amazon.

This game is the result of a lot of hard work and persistence of a 12 years old kid who is courageous enough to dream of becoming an entrepreneur.

Battle Timz could not have succeeded without the help of backers including Abhishek, Suchi, Maureen, Brigette, and many others.

If you would like to buy the game and try it out yourself then click https://tinyurl.com/BattleTimz