‘What Do You Meme’ company acquires top murder mystery game Hunt a Killer

A family of startups that began as an Internet meme factory before spawning a major seller of card games is making yet another unlikely move. One of the companies, Relatable, has acquired a leading murder mystery tabletop game, Hunt a Killer.

The deal’s terms were not disclosed.

The acquisition adds to Relatable’s already formidable stable of games that it says account for over $100 million in annual revenue. Its top product, What Do You Meme, is a best-selling card game in Walmart stores and on TikTok Shop and Amazon, according to the company. Since its inception in 2016, the company has sold over 45 million of its 100-plus products that range from bonding game Let’s Get Deep to a cat scratch toy shaped like a laptop.

Games are far from Relatable’s roots. It was founded by college dropouts who were helping to invent Instagram virality in 2011 by sharing funny photos and captions—memes—on the nascent social app. With millions of followers on their F*ckJerry social accounts five years later, then-Jerry Media salesman Ben Kaplan started printing out Internet memes, and realized cutting them up and pairing the photos with different captions could be a great game. Ultimately, the company turned the discovery into the card game What Do You Meme that requires players to compete for laughs by pairing well-known meme images with captions. It turned out to be a strong enough business that it has become the primary revenue driver for the memelords, allowing them to spin it into Relatable with a staff of 80 full-time employees.

With the latest acquisition, Relatable will bring seven Hunt a Killer workers in-house, including its cofounder and vice president of creative Derrick Smith. Hunt a Killer has generated $200 million in revenue since its founding eight years ago in each of those years, according to a spokesperson for Relatable.

“[Hunt a Killer’s] creative team, which we’ve retained, is the best-in-class at writing these really dense plots that fans love,” says Kaplan, now Relatable's cofounder and partner. “Our biggest opportunity is to focus on retail…that’s where we do the bulk of our business—stores like Target, Walmart, Amazon, etc.”

Relatable’s rise—in both its revenue milestone and most recent acquisition—is an important marketing lesson for creators who are increasingly searching offline for ways to make money. It was able to use its meme and funny video accounts F*ckJerry, plus others Beige Cardigan, Dude With Sign, to attract an audience of 50 million across social platforms, and then get those users to spend money on its products—while signing deals with brands that wanted to be memeified.

Creator-founded businesses like Relatable rarely acquire consumer companies with physical products. That said, creator-founded consumer businesses like What Do You Meme can be relatively significant. The most prominent examples in the category include MrBeast’s chocolate company Feastables and Logan Paul and KSI’s Prime drink company.

“This isn't like the first electric car—this isn't Tesla,” says Vickie Segar, founder of influencer marketing agency Village Marketing, arguing that Relatable buying Hunt a Killer is unsurprising considering they are both game companies. “But I mean, [Relatable] is doing a good job if they're making that amount of money. You can't argue with that.”

Elliot Tebele, who cofounded Relatable, has weathered his share of controversies. First, there was enormous backlash to him copying content from other creators without crediting them, and then posting it to F*ckJerry’s audience of millions. Next, Tebele helped run social media marketing for the Fyre Festival, an infamous music extravaganza in the Bahamas that was canceled, with thousands in attendance, due to poor planning and left its founder, Billy McFarland, in prison for fraud. Tebele polished his reputation by serving as executive producer for a Netflix documentary about the disaster, though some say without acknowledging his responsibility for the festival’s collapse. This backlash (called F*ckF*ckJerry) prompted top comedians like Amy Schumer, John Mulaney, and Colin Hanks, along with 300,000 regular users, to unfollow F*ckJerry, as I previously reported for Forbes.

Since then, Tebele has gone off-camera and focused on business, earning $30 million in 2023, mostly from selling Relatable products, according to Forbes. The strategy for Tebele and his Relatable cofounders Ben Kaplan and Elie Ballas has been to stay out of the spotlight and emphasize the company’s products with marketing help from over 5,000 influencers.

The trick is to develop big-selling games by focusing first on their look and feel in TikTok videos, Instagram memes and YouTube Shorts, Ballas says. “By thinking about it all from the marketing lens first, based on our background, that's how we've been able to not just have one viral game, but dozens of truly viral hits games and other products,” he says.

How much Hunt a Killer’s cofounders, Ryan Hogan and Derrick Smith, made in the sale to Relatable is unclear. They owned 85% of the company, making their combined stakes worth $68 million in 2020, according to Forbes.

Relatable’s Kaplan says Hunt a Killer’s original strategy of pushing consumers to buy games through its own website will “not be a focus” going forward. Relatable’s focus now is on sending TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube followers to the digital and physical storefronts of Amazon, Target, and Walmart.

“We really felt like we started to hit our stride in retail. But the reality is that being able to do retail independently without some sort of strategic [partner] that has a portfolio is pretty challenging,” says Hunt a Killer CEO Hogan, who will not be joining Relatable. “Based on where we were at the resources, it was time to find a strategic [partner] that can take Hunt a Killer to the next level.”

Before Tebele, Ballas, and Kaplan became card game kings, they were kids sharing memes. Tebele started F*ckJerry, an homage to Jerry Seinfeld, as a Tumblr account in 2011 after dropping out of college and working at his brother’s wholesale electronics company in Little Ferry, NJ. A few years later he became one of the first to popularize the meme format. He brought in childhood friend Ballas and Kaplan as business partners, and the three own the company together and have been profitable since without ever taking outside funding.

In addition to card games, Relatable also has lines of heating pads and plush toys. Tebele and is also a cofounder of tequila company Jaja that counts the Chainsmokers and other influencers as investors, and is often featured on the F*ckJerry account.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com