Javon Frazier, 46, grew up in a single-parent home in L.A. His mom worked hard to support him, so comic books and video games were like his babysitters. That nerdy childhood translated into an animated career: After business school, Frazier inked a job with Marvel Entertainment, and then Studio71, a media company, where he would become chief product officer, making frequent trips to China to handle manufacturing for merch like fidget spinners. It was great, until it wasn’t–he realized that he was away from home too much. Frazier struck out on his own with Maestro Media, and in 2021 launched a card game on Kickstarter called the Binding of Isaac: Four Souls Requiem. There was a problem, though: Frazier needed capital before the campaign started. A lot of capital.
I had a conversation with my wife when I was starting the business: “I need to pull some money out of the house.” She goes, “Well, how much?” I go, “All of it.” My wife is the most supportive person ever, but I’m not kidding–I remember it like it was yesterday–it was as if someone had dropped a boulder on her. She physically sat down. It hit her so hard. But eventually she said OK. At that point, we knew we were all in.
I had to figure out how to get from January 2021 to June 2021. I had a guy who did my taxes, and I asked him to be my CFO. I got an attorney. I got a head of operations. I was hiring people, and we were burning through cash like crazy. In about April or May, my CFO said, “Hey, man, we’re out of cash.” I was like, “Dude, get me to the starting gate.”
We launched our Kickstarter campaign on June 1, 2021, and did a million dollars in the first 90 minutes. And everything was OK. If this thing hadn’t worked, I would have lost my house. We did $6.7 million in 30 days. It was one of the biggest Kickstarter campaigns of all time. It was the first project we had done as Maestro Media. And it was life changing. I bet on the amazing creator of the game, Edmund McMillen. I’d be remiss not to talk about him. He’s the creative genius. I’ve learned so much from him. We have a licenser-licensee relationship, but very much a partnership.
Roughly 48,000 people backed that campaign. We were designing and delivering the game during Covid-19, and the world wasn’t shipping or manufacturing at the rate that it was pre-Covid. So one of the cool things that we did was launch our subscription program. Because we knew it would take some time for people to get their packages from China, we launched a thing called the Unboxing of Isaac in 2022. It was a monthly subscription that came with a T-shirt, cards, and a bonus item. We built that amazing community of people with the subscription to keep them engaged. Then we delivered more than 150,000 packages for the Binding of Isaac Kickstarter. The game came in 12 languages–that was another way we grew our business. The model is that we are able to drive tons of engagement and awareness through crowdfunding.
We went from one game to 10 games, with potentially 30 games by 2026–we’re on track for that. We went from one person to 12 people. We’re fully remote. We’re releasing Hello Kitty this fall; we’re releasing Smurfs after that.
Back when I was at Studio71, I was flying 150,000 miles a year, and my wife was like, “Dude, this is a lot.” I didn’t know what my kids ate for breakfast, for god’s sake. I thought to myself, “I have to figure something else out.” I had to spend more time with my kids. I wasn’t part of pickup or drop-off. I needed to get more involved. I come from a single-parent home, and my mom sacrificed everything for me. And I want my daughters to have the best life, so I had to do this for them.
Now, it’s great to share Maestro with them. I joke all the time that they’re the most underpaid play testers in the world; they have to play all the games. Anything that I’m working on, they want to be a part of, because their dad’s a part of it.
I made a change because I saw my life going in a direction I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to lose my family or be apart from my wife. I’m so blessed to be here, to be at home, to be with my family.
Source: How This Founder Built a $12 Million Startup on Card Games
