Startups

These two members of #dctech decided to do something completely different

They needed a break from the daily grind. So, over MLK weekend, Amelia Friedman and Param Jaggi launched a company to “Make Card Games Great Again.”

The 2016 Election Game. (Courtesy photo)

We’ve all been there — sometimes you just really need a break.
This is where Amelia Friedman and Param Jaggi found themselves as the long Martin Luther King Jr. weekend approached. The duo had spent the previous four months working hard to launch their tech company, Hatch. (Hatch is a SaaS product that allows users to build custom mobile apps for free without code. But more on that at another time.)
They’d been coding and marketing and researching and designing and, as other founders will know, there is always more to be done. While both Friedman and Jaggi love what they do, they were feeling a little burned out.
“We needed to take a break and remind ourselves why we love being entrepreneurs,” Friedman said.
So Friedman came up with an idea: They’d take the weekend and build something. They’d decide on a business idea, create the product and launch all in the span of three days. It would be their “own startup weekend.”
And so they did — meet the 2016 Election Game.


That’s right, these two techies took their talents (and a pair of scissors) and made a physical card game — a timely version of Cards Against Humanity. The prototype they made themselves, but they’re having the real product professionally printed. Five thousand sets are available for pre-order.
Friedman says that even though they’ve only been marketing the game a little and she doesn’t have any experience selling a physical product and it’s hard to sell something that doesn’t yet exist, the process is worth it. “This is not going to be a million-dollar company,” she said. “This is just a fun thing. The goal is to break even.”
The other goal, of course, is to regain inspiration and remember what’s so great about being an entrepreneur. How has the 2016 Election Game served on that front?
“This has been so rejuvenating for us,” Friedman said.

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