Cursed Crypt was a tabletop-gaming hardware company I co-founded in Spokane, Washington in 2018. We designed and manufactured physical products for tabletop role playing games, ran the brand and store ourselves, and built our own just-in-time production facility. I was co-founder and chief product officer. The company has since closed.
The bet
The tabletop market was growing fast but had seen little real product innovation in decades. Most accessories were variations on ideas from the 1980s. We built products from a player's point of view, kept an on-shored supply chain with full in-house production, and used original media and community to grow the brand.
What we built
Mimic's Grid was the flagship: a 10 by 10 inch raised steel tile with an integrated impact frame, a neoprene base, and embedded magnets. Tiles snap together, magnetic pieces and printed maps lock onto the face, and a coating I developed, called ANY-ERASE, lets you write on it with any marker and wipe it clean.
Goblin Glass carried that surface to an 8.5 by 11 inch dry-erase sheet. Around the platform we produced magnetic maps and elements, adhesive magnets for miniatures, a cleaning kit, and apparel.
I developed the nano-ceramic coating, did the 3D modeling and engineering drawings, and set up the manufacturing workflow: wide-format magnetic printing, contour cutting, and 3D printing for prototyping.
Traction
We launched Mimic's Grid on Kickstarter in 2019 and cleared the $30K goal at about 330%, raising roughly $100K on the platform plus about $75K in direct presales, almost entirely on word of mouth in the tabletop community. Across the four-year run we raised about $500K in seed capital. We opened a production facility in Spokane Valley, shipped the first products that December, and filed patents and trademarks for the Mimic's Grid and the ANY-ERASE coating through Lee & Hayes.
My role
- Ran product development end to end, from concept and 3D modeling through manufacturing.
- Led the Kickstarter campaign and the community that formed around it.
- Built the brand, the website, and the e-commerce store.
- Stood up and managed in-house manufacturing.
- Set the operating model across R&D, media, manufacturing, and digital.