A year ago, we weren't sure if we were right about anything.

We had a theory: tabletop game creators don't need more tools. They need fewer tools. One workspace. Purpose-built. Designed by people who've actually shipped games, not software engineers guessing at workflows.

But theories are cheap. We had to find out if creators would actually use what we built.

In 2025, we got our answer. Not because metrics told us so. Because creators told us.

What Creators Showed Us

Early in the year, we noticed something we didn't expect.

A designer messaged us: "I got my creative brain back. I'm not managing the spreadsheet anymore."

A publisher told us: "I have one source of truth now. I'm not angry at my tools."

Another creator wrote: "For the first time, I can focus on the design instead of the system."

Not testimonials we'd collected. Just messages that came unprompted. Stories we weren't looking for.

That's when we realized: We're not selling a tool. We're removing the friction that people have been living with for so long that they've stopped noticing it was there.

A Moment That Surprised Us

Mid-2025, something shifted.

We started getting messages from creators we'd never talked to before. Not because we advertised. Because someone they knew used Boardssey and told them about it. Word-of-mouth from actual adoption.

That's the moment we stopped wondering if this mattered and started trying to keep up with people who'd already decided it did.

By the time we stepped back and looked at the full year, we realized: over 600 creators were building games on Boardssey. That wasn't a goal we'd set. It was evidence that we'd actually solved a real problem.

What We Didn't Expect

We also didn't expect manufacturers to care.

We built Boardssey thinking: tabletop creators need clarity and efficiency. That's the play.

But early in the year, we started talking to Panda Game Manufacturing. Michael Lee, their CEO, has been in this industry for over 20 years. He's seen thousands of games succeed and fail. He knows exactly what separates the two.

He told us something that resonated with us: "The most successful teams are those that pair creative passion with strong organization."

In the second half of the year, he took it further: Panda started recommending Boardssey to their customers. Because they understood: organized creators ship better games.

LaunchBoom, the crowdfunding platform for tabletop games, did something similar. They started pointing their creators toward Boardssey because they realized what we had too: creators designing games need a workspace purpose-built for the workflow.

These weren't partnerships we won. They were recognitions from people deep in the industry who saw a real gap and understood we were filling it.

Industry Signals

What's interesting is what started happening once creators began using Boardssey seriously.

Early in the year, Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games published something that mattered to us: "The interface is clearly designed from the ground up with game designers in mind."

Not a business arrangement. Just recognition that we'd understood the craft.

The Meeple Syrup Show had us on their podcast around that same time.

Then, in the second half of the year, things accelerated. BoardGameWire covered our story, and later covered the Panda partnership because it was significant enough to warrant coverage.

We're appearing on the Board Game Design Virtual Summit with Joe Slack.

None of this happened because we were good at PR. It happened because creators were already using what we'd built and talking about it. The industry was paying attention because creators were.

What We're Still Learning

Here's what matters most to say: We don't have this figured all out.

Product-market fit sounds like a destination. Like you reach it and you're done. But we've learned it's more fragile than that.

It's real, yes. Over 600 creators have shown us they need this. But it's only real as long as we keep listening. As long as we keep asking: What are we getting wrong? What did we miss? Where does this break?

Product-market fit for us means: we understood the core problem (tool chaos). But we're still learning all the ways tabletop creators need us to solve it. And we can lose that if we stop paying attention.

That tension, between knowing we're right about the core and knowing we're still very early in understanding the full scope, is what keeps us moving forward.

What Excites Us About 2026

We're starting to see where the real opportunities are.

Creators are asking if they can design game elements directly in Boardssey. Cards, tokens, boards.

Not just manage them, but actually design them within the platform. That's a different layer of what we solve.

But what's really interesting is that creators are asking about the business side of tabletop games alongside the creative work. They want to know the numbers: How much will this component cost to manufacture? What's my per-unit cost at different production scales? If I raise money through crowdfunding, what's my actual margin? What's my breakeven point?

Nobody's building that. Purpose-built tools exist for the creative side. Purpose-built tools exist for manufacturing. But nothing connects them. What if a tabletop creator could see the full picture? Design work and business reality in one workspace. Creative clarity and financial clarity happening together.

We're not running ahead of ourselves. We're walking carefully. But we're paying attention to what creators are actually asking for. Not guessing at features. Building toward real needs.

Because we've learned: you don't assume you know what creators need. You build something, you listen, you adjust, you build again.

That cycle is how you actually grow.

An Invitation

If you're still managing tabletop game development across Notion and Trello and Canva and spreadsheets, you probably already know what's broken. You've felt the friction. You've lost time to context-switching. You've wondered if there's a better way.

We didn't invent that problem. We just built something to solve it. And we're still learning what else it could solve.

If you want to be part of that discovery, if you want to design your game in a workspace that was actually built for tabletop game development, come see if we've solved your specific version of this problem.

No credit card. Two minutes to set up your first game.

And if we haven't solved something you need, tell me. That's how 2026 gets shaped.

You can reach me at anca@boardssey.com.

Boardssey is built by Luis Francisco, Rey David, and Anca Nicoleta. We've shipped games. We know what's broken. We're trying to fix it. And we're still learning whether we're doing it right.

Come build with us. Teach us where we're wrong.