Board<\/a>, the three-year-old, Recent York-based startup constructing what it calls \u201ctogether tech\u201d \u2014 tech designed to bring people physically into the identical room \u2014 has closed a $20 million Series A led by Union Square Ventures.<\/p>\nGeneral Partner Michael Mignano, in his first investment since joining USV, will join the corporate\u2019s board of directors. The round also brought in some famous angel investors including Biz Stone, Tim Ferriss, and Scott Belsky.<\/p>\n
The raise comes about eight months after founder Brynn Putnam \u2014 who previously sold connected fitness startup Mirror to Lululemon for $500 million \u2014 unveiled Board publicly at TechCrunch Disrupt last October. <\/p>\n
The Board device is a 24-inch touchscreen in a wood-finish frame that uses proprietary technology to acknowledge physical game pieces, mixing the tactile feel of board games with the interactivity of video games.<\/p>\n
Traction since launch has been strong, the corporate says: Board is now in tens of 1000’s of homes, schools, hospitals, and restaurants across all 50 states, with 85% of shoppers averaging 30 or more play sessions per 30 days.<\/p>\n
Alongside the funding, Board announced Board Studio, an AI-powered creation platform launching later this 12 months that can let anyone construct original games using natural language prompts \u2014 from idea to playable prototype in under an hour, it says.<\/p>\n
Board had previously raised $15 million in funding led by the enterprise firm Lerer Hippeau, which had also led Mirror\u2019s $3 million seed round years earlier. That was a bet that paid off handsomely when Putnam sold the connected fitness company to Lululemon in 2020.<\/p>\n
Putnam sees Board as a natural extension of what she learned about consumer hardware while constructing Mirror. \u201cMirror was very much about me,\u201d she once told TechCrunch. \u201cIt was my reflection, my performance, it was about making your personal self higher. At that next phase, my life was really just rather more about my family and my friends and my relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result’s a product built around the straightforward but increasingly popular concept that the perfect use of tech may be to get people to place their devices down and look one another within the face.<\/p>\n
The raise arrives at a moment when consumer tech, long out of favor with investors, is showing signs of bouncing back, driven largely by what AI is making newly possible. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m more enthusiastic about consumer than I\u2019ve been in an extended time,\u201d said Ben Lerer, managing partner of Lerer Hippeau, late last 12 months during a separate sit-down with TechCrunch. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a really high-quality group of founders saying, \u2018Now\u2019s the time to get back within the pool.\u2019 There are things which can be possible today that weren\u2019t possible six months ago or a 12 months ago, and the slope is steep.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Board, the three-year-old, Recent York-based startup constructing what it calls \u201ctogether tech\u201d \u2014 tech designed to bring people physically into the identical room \u2014 has closed a $20 million Series A led by Union Square Ventures. General Partner Michael Mignano, in his first investment since joining USV, will join the corporate\u2019s board of directors. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":344924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[9918,1851,19307,3777,585,1836,40235,3513,694,142,11088],"class_list":["post-344923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-20m","tag-board","tag-brynn","tag-founder","tag-game","tag-mirror","tag-putnam","tag-raises","tag-sold","tag-startup","tag-thousands"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344923"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344926,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344923\/revisions\/344926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}