Product Manager Starts “Airbnb for Dungeons and Dragons”

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

If you're trying to figure out what kind of business do I want to start, what is my side hustle? Well, it's never a bad idea to look at hobbies. Hobbies where people spend money in particular. If you look at where people spend their time or they like to spend a lot of time, especially on a hobby that costs money, I often give the example of golf. Even though I don't play golf myself, but my understanding is there's no way to play golf without spending money. Like the entire sport is actually based on

paying to play as well as acquiring gear that costs money. There's also clothes, education, and more golf. Good side hustle to go into or at least a good topic. Now golf is just an example. Here is another Dungeons and Dragons.

What does golf have to do with Dungeons and Dragons? Well, thankfully you can play Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop games without spending a lot of money. But it is something that people obsess over. It's something that people obsess over, spend a lot of time on. So it definitely meets at least one of those qualities of a hobby that might be a good side hustle.

Now I tell you all that because of course the product manager featured in today's story has achieved the dream of many kids born in the 80s and 90s. He gets paid to host and run his favorite tabletop role-playing games. He has also built a platform Airbnb for Dungeons and Dragons where he gets paid to be a matchmaker. And it's that project in particular that we're going to look at because it's doing fabulously well bringing in in fact multiple six figures. At least in terms of overall sales he gets paid a percentage on that.

But I'll tell you all about that in the story. So project manager starts Airbnb for Dungeons and Dragons. That is the story. It's coming up in just 30 seconds. Devin Chulick makes his living helping people battle monsters, cast powerful spells, embark on fantastical adventures, and even slay the occasional dragon.

He hasn't been cast as the new lead in a Netflix series. He's a game master. You see, Devin is a huge fan of tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. He's been playing them on and off for most of his life. And if you're not familiar with the concept, these games are a little like board games. Just without the board.

When players roll the dice, they move the narrative forward and have to cooperate with other players to get towards the end goal. A game usually lasts two to three hours with an average of four to six players. Games masters like Devin are one-part storyteller, one-part game referee. They make sure the game moves along as it should. And in his case, Devin got into it as a way to unwind from his busy job as a product manager.

He quickly found he had a skill for it and he wasn't the only one who noticed. Soon he was being asked to host games for other players, who wanted an experienced games master at the helm. As his weeknights began to fill up with more and more exciting adventures, Devin began to ask himself the all-important question, "Would people pay for this?" After nearly two years of hosting games, he made his move. With a budget of $100, he made a simple website with a booking form. He settled on prices of between $25 and $45 per person, depending on the demands of the game.

It was enough to justify his time, but also keep the games accessible to players. And when the site was ready to go, he shared it on local forums. It turned out lots of people were open to the idea of paying for a professional games master to run their games. In fact, demand was so high that within just a few months, Devin was earning $2,000 a month from hosting them. Devin was able to use his knowledge from working in the e-commerce industry to optimize his site so it would rank well for search terms and drive new players to him.

After he built some initial momentum from referrals, many of his customers found him organically through searching on Google. He also invested some of his earnings back into the business to use paid ads to get his service in front of even more players. This unusual business success attracted media attention, and one article in particular changed the entire trajectory for him. In 2019, Business Week ran an article on professional games masters, and they featured Devin as an example. Within hours of the online article going up, Devin's inbox began filling up with bookings for his service.

In addition, he also started seeing the same question popping up from other games masters, most of whom had always volunteered their time. The question was, "How can I get paid like you do?" One of those outreach emails came from someone with a specific idea. This user had been thinking about starting a website, kind of like Airbnb, but for games masters. They wanted Devin's insight into how it might work. This led to a four-hour long phone call, where the two of them fleshed out the idea and committed to working on it together.

It would lead to the website StartPlaying.games. StartPlaying.games. In September of 2020, Devin and his new co-founder launched their service on Product Hunt and Hacker News. They created two parts of the business, where users could either find a game to take part in, or find a games master to run their upcoming game. The platform handles bookings, takes payments, and allows users to give feedback on the people they played with.

The owners make money by taking a 10% cut from each transaction, a figure they decided on by looking at similar models from Airbnb and Fiverr. Accessibility remains important, as they didn't want the price of using the service to get in the way of playing games. And what's the result? Well, so far StartPlaying.games has brought in a combined $500,000 since launch. Devin has also been able to quit his day job and focus on the project full time.

Well, I love this example. You know, I often talk about how you don't want a good idea. You want a profitable idea. Big difference between an idea that just sounds pretty good versus one that we're like, yeah, this is a profitable idea. It has a clear market, provides a clear service or product.

But it doesn't just stop there. You know, good idea, profitable idea. The most interesting thing is going from profitable idea to next level idea. And you can clearly see the difference in this story because being the games master of the GM, that was a profitable idea that worked pretty well. And, you know, he's providing a clear service to a clear market.

He's in demand, etc. But his next level idea, Devin's next level idea, comes from actually starting this website that is a platform that facilitates connections between lots of GMs and players. So this is something that actually has the potential to provide passive income and become an asset and something that he could eventually sell or eventually rely on for income, you know, for a long period of time. So becoming the matchmaker is the next level idea. Congrats, Devin.

Thanks for letting us share your story. And listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. To find the show notes for today, including links to everything mentioned in the episode and more, go to www.sidehustleschool.com/1690. That is 1-6-9-0. Thank you for tuning in today.

I hope you will subscribe or follow and come back tomorrow. New episode every day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.