The world will continuously need to have new things introduced, and every time something new gets introduced, people will gravitate toward it and give it all the props it needs to take off. That is the case of the new game, PaddleSmash, which is taking the market by storm and amassing players by the day despite its awaiting-patent status.
Created by two serial entrepreneurs, Scott Brown and Tim Swindle, PaddleSmash was launched less than a year ago in the toy and game industry. The game, built on the familiar Pickleball game, has staked its presence strongly as American sporting goods retail outfits, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Academy Sports have added the game to their retail offerings. Explaining the inspiration behind the game and what influenced the creation, Tim Swindle said: “We are both serial entrepreneurs in the toy and game space, and I got my start in the industry while I was a software entrepreneur building a software company. I decided to do a side hustle and create a party board game. The rest is history.”
Tim Swindle met his co-founder, Scott Brown, through the Kickstarter campaign that was set up to secure funding for his first venture in the toys and games industry. At the time, Scott ran a company called Marbles: The Brain Store, which was the first retailer to pick up Tim’s venture. That business relationship evolved into friendship, and now they both have stakes in PaddleSmash as joint owners.
Their respective companies got acquired after a while, but the two friends already had their sights set on building something together, and with their existing history, it was easy to float PaddleSmash and steer it in the direction it’s headed currently. ”I was always evaluating concepts for my retail shops. I probably evaluated an estimated 20,000 ideas over the course of 10 years. So I developed a fairly strong ability to find good things. People are always pitching me concepts. Invariably, when I tell somebody what I do, they have a friend or family member who has developed a game, and want me to see it, which is great. Someone pitched me the idea for PaddleSmash, which is a cross between pickleball and Spikeball. I am really into pickleball, and my retail stores were one of the very first retail stores to carry a game called Spikeball, which has been the biggest commercial success in the outdoor game space over the last ten years. I watched that thing grow and thought there’s a real opportunity here with PaddleSmash too. That was pretty much it, and here we are,” Scott explained.
All it took for the co-founders to launch PaddleSmsah officially was to team up with the original inventor, obtain the license for the idea and set it up at the local pickleball courts for people to get a feel of the game. Things took off from there, and the game is near being patented.
Tim believes the most important thing for any idea to become successful and widely accepted is to share it. He believes every entrepreneur should consider sharing their ideas with other people outside their trusted circles. “That’s the only way you’ll know how valuable or meaningful your idea is. I’m not talking about you sharing it with your mom. She’s not going to give you the feedback you need. Bounce it around and see what others think. No one is going to steal it because nobody cares about your idea as much as you do,” he said.
The two entrepreneurs have worked together seamlessly as they promote PaddleSmash to a global audience. Their goal is to make it one of the top games and one that people genuinely enjoy playing. They hope to stake a claim in the gaming industry and look back in a few years, smiling proudly at what they created.
