Board, a new game startup from Mirror founder Brynn Putnam, raises $20M, has already sold thousands

["Board, a three-year-old New York-based startup, has closed a $20 million Series A funding round led by Union Square Ventures. The company, founded by Brynn Putnam, who previously sold her connected fitness startup Mirror to Lululemon for $500 million, is building what it calls 'together tech' — technology designed to bring people physically into the same room.", "The funding round, which marks General Partner Michael Mignano's first investment since joining USV, will also see Mignano join Board's board of directors. The round also attracted several high-profile angel investors, including Biz Stone, Tim Ferriss, and Scott Belsky.

This raise comes about eight months after Putnam unveiled Board publicly at TechCrunch Disrupt last October.", "Board's product is a 24-inch touchscreen device in a wood-finish frame that uses proprietary technology to recognize physical game pieces. This allows the company to blend the tactile feel of board games with the interactivity of video games. Since its launch, Board has seen strong traction, with the device now in tens of thousands of homes, schools, hospitals, and restaurants across all 50 states.

According to the company, 85% of its customers average 30 or more play sessions per month.", 'Alongside the funding, Board announced the upcoming launch of Board Studio, an AI-powered creation platform that will allow users to build original games using natural language prompts. The platform, set to launch later this year, claims to be able to take users from idea to playable prototype in under an hour. With this new platform, Board aims to expand its offerings and make game creation more accessible to a wider audience.', "For Putnam, Board represents a natural extension of what she learned about consumer hardware while building Mirror.

'Mirror was very much about me,' she once told TechCrunch. 'It was my reflection, my performance, it was about making your own self better. At that next phase, my life was really just much more about my family and my friends and my relationships.' The result is a product built around the simple but increasingly popular idea that the best use of tech might be to get people to put their devices down and look each other in the face.", "The funding raise arrives at a moment when consumer tech, long out of favor with investors, is showing signs of bouncing back, driven in large part by what AI is making newly possible.

'I'm more excited about consumer than I've been in a long time,' said Ben Lerer, managing partner of Lerer Hippeau, late last year. 'We're seeing a very high-quality group of founders saying, 'Now's the time to get back in the pool.' There are things that are possible today that weren't possible six months ago or a year ago, and the slope is steep.'"]