The Audience-Lover Partner Test
Only partner with people who would still entertain their audience if the money went to zero.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 92%
Lee says he has become enamoured with partnerships, and that all the best things his company now makes are collaborations with someone smarter than him. The input is a pool of potential collaborators; the mechanism is a single test of whether they love their audience unconditionally; the output is a partnership where Exploding Kittens supplies a capability — the ability to say I made a game — that the partner could not obtain alone.
Origin
Lee built a game with Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller and describes it as getting access to an amazing brain for a few months. That experience crystallised a company capability: making it possible for people with real audiences to truthfully say they made a game, which he calls a tough statement you cannot make on your own because it is genuinely hard to do.
Core principles
- 01The single filter for a partner is simple: do they love their audience?
- 02If the audience is a tool for gaining money, or a means to an end, the answer is no regardless of reach.
- 03The signal you want is unconditional: I cannot help but entertain these people, and I would do it with no stage and no audience.
- 04Lee estimates this group is on the smaller side — for a very high percentage of creators, the love is conditional on financial outcome.
- 05The best test question is the counterfactual: if this audience delivered zero financial value today, would you still engage?
- 06Partnerships should be a chocolate-and-peanut-butter fit — each side brings a superpower the other structurally lacks.
- 07Offer the partner something they genuinely cannot say on their own; the value you provide should be a capability, not just a cheque.
- 08For a person who is shy in social situations, a partnership offer is a better calling card than self-promotion.
How to run it
- 1
Define what you actually offer
Exploding Kittens can let someone who has built a following truthfully claim they made a game — hard to do alone, and the company enables it end to end over a few months.
Pro tip Frame the offer as a capability the partner lacks rather than as exposure or revenue share.
- 2
Apply the audience-love test
The criterion is simply people who love their audiences. If the audience is a tool to gain money or a means to an end, Lee is not interested at all.
Pro tip The affirmative signal is a partner saying they cannot help but entertain these people and would do it with no stage at all.
Watch out Reach is orthogonal to this test and will bias you if you look at it first.
- 3
Run the zero-revenue counterfactual
Tim's sharpened version: if your audience stopped delivering any financial value today, zero dollars, would you still engage? He estimates the honest answer for a very high percentage is no.
Watch out Both agree the love being conditional is understandable when someone is paying rent and school fees — this is a fit test, not a moral verdict.
- 4
Check the superpowers are complementary
Lee's model of the Peter Chernin deal applies to creators too — his superpower was networking, theirs was delightful IP, and together the sum was greater than the components.
Pro tip Say out loud what each side cannot do. If either list is empty, it is a transaction, not a partnership.
- 5
Make yourself reachable and let them self-select
Lee's stated route in is writing to the company's general support address, which routes to a group and reaches him. He notes that using partnerships as a calling card suits someone who gets very shy in social situations.
Pro tip A monitored public inbox is a low-cost sourcing channel when your filter is qualitative rather than quantitative.
Watch out Lee's earlier open-door policy for game submissions collapsed under two hundred emails a day — pair openness with a filtering team.
In the wild
Lee describes making a game with Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller and says he cannot believe he got access to that brain for a few months. The experience reframed how he thinks about the company's role: rather than simply publishing games, Exploding Kittens can approach people who have built real followings and offer them something they cannot achieve alone — a genuine claim to having made a game — with the company supplying every capability the making requires.
→ A partnership model Lee calls deeply satisfying, running on several collaborations, and a calling card that suits an admitted introvert.
Exploding Kittens once had a completely open door policy for game pitches — in person, through the website, by email, over Zoom, every day. Lee says he made a really bad assumption, namely that people who have game ideas have good game ideas. What arrived was two hundred emails a day of half-remembered childhood games involving three cards, and he had no time left to do his actual job. The fix was hiring a talented team to source from conventions, inventor meetups and local meetups and filter aggressively.
→ Roughly ten curated pitches a month reach Lee, pre-filtered by a team that has learned exactly what he says no to.
Common mistakes
Selecting on reach
The natural partner filter is audience size, which measures distribution and says nothing about the relationship behind it. Lee's test deliberately ignores scale and looks only at whether the creator would still show up with nothing to gain.
Assuming a good audience implies good ideas
This is the same bad assumption that broke the open-door policy, transposed. A creator who genuinely loves their audience still needs the partner to supply the actual craft — which is precisely what Lee's company offers.
Opening the door without building the filter
Making yourself reachable is only sustainable with a screening layer in front of it. Two hundred unfiltered submissions a day cost Lee the ability to do his real job until a scouting team was hired.
Is it for you?
Best for
Companies building creator or IP collaborations who can offer a real capability the partner lacks.
Not ideal for
Pure performance-marketing arrangements where reach is the deliverable and the creator relationship is intentionally transactional.
From the transcript
“it's really simple it's people who love their audiences”
“if your audience is a tool for you to gain money if your audience is like a means to an ends not interested at all”
“if if your audience stop delivering any financial value to you today zero doar can you derive from this audience would you still engage and…”
From the episode
#653: Elan Lee, Co-Creator of Exploding Kittens — How to Raise Millions on Kickstarter, Deconstructing Mega-Successes, Secrets of Game Design, The Power of Positive Constraints, The Delights of Craftsmanship, and The Art of Turning Fans into Superfans