Brynn Putnam's New Board Game Console Raises $20M and Brings Video Game Features to Your Tabletop
Board, a startup founded by fitness entrepreneur Brynn Putnam, just raised $20 million in funding. The company makes a gaming console that blends traditional board games with digital video game features. Board has already sold thousands of units and showed off its product at the tech conference TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
Putnam sold her previous company, Mirror, to Lululemon in 2020 for $500 million. Mirror was a screen and streaming service that brought personal training into people's homes during the pandemic. Now she is applying those same skills — blending physical activity with digital technology — to a new area: family game nights at home.
A New Path Forward
Putnam studied ballet professionally before switching to technology. She attended Harvard from 2001 to 2005, then started Mirror. With Board, she is trying something similar to Mirror but for a different part of home life. Instead of fitness equipment that connects to screens, Board is a gaming console that sits in the middle of your living room table and works alongside physical board game pieces.
How Board Works
Think of Board as a bridge between classic board games and video games. It is a console that sits on or near your table and displays information on a screen. Game pieces remain physical objects you hold in your hands. But the console keeps score, changes rules in real time, and adds videos or sound — all things paper and cardboard alone cannot do.
This solves a real tension in family entertainment. Kids expect interactive digital experiences. Adults sometimes miss the social closeness of sitting around a table with each other. Board tries to offer both at once: you sit together, you touch the game pieces, but the console adds the interactive layer younger players want.
Funding and Early Sales
The $20 million funding round comes after Board had already sold thousands of consoles. For a specialized gaming product targeting families, that sales number shows real people are buying it, not just tech enthusiasts with their wallets. Venture capital firm Union Square Ventures led the funding round.
Where This Fits in Gaming History
We have seen a pattern like this before. When Nintendo introduced the Wii gaming console around 2006, it used motion controllers — a new way to hold and move the device — and that opened gaming to people who had never been interested in traditional video game controllers. Board is betting on something similar: that the right way to mix physical and digital gaming can attract families who want to play together but do not feel happy with either pure board games or pure video games.
Mirror showed that families will spend money on physical hardware if it improves an activity they already do. Board is trying the same approach with gaming.
What Comes Next
Board has real challenges ahead. Someone has to design games that work on the console — games that need both physical pieces and the digital layer. Traditional board game makers may not know how to do the digital part. Video game makers may find the physical piece too limiting. Building up a library of good games will take time.
There is also the matter of actually making and selling the hardware. Unlike software that lives on a phone or computer, Board has to manufacture consoles, ship them, and keep them working well. That is more expensive and complicated. The company will have to stay on top of that while prices stay high enough to pay for all that work.
Historically, gaming consoles live or die by whether developers keep making good games for them and whether the company running things stays in the game for the long haul. Board will need both to succeed.
The $20 million gives Putnam's team money to hire people, improve the product, and make more consoles as demand grows. If Board works out, it could mark a third success for Putnam — first with Mirror in fitness, now with Board in family gaming. That would suggest she has real skill at spotting moments when physical and digital life are ready to merge.
