Entrepreneurship & Growth
Meet Max Johnson Goldrich
16 September 2026 · 2 min read
Plenty of businesses start with a problem at home. For Max Johnson Goldrich, the problem was a simple one: he wanted to play chess with his whole family.
A game for four
Max is a father of three, and he wanted all four of them to be able to play chess together at the same time. He went looking for a four-player chess game to buy, and spent around a year searching. Everything he found, he told the bench, was novelty stuff with rules that made no sense. So he did what founders do: he built his own.
That idea became Fortuna Ludi Limited, the company Max founded to create unique four-player games, both as mobile apps for Android and iOS and as physical board games sold through its website.
Turning a solitary game into a team sport
Max's view is that chess is a very solitary game: just you, one opponent and everything going on in your head. His version turns it into a team game. Partners sit opposite each other and play in turn order (white, black, red, then blue), and it pays to protect your partner, because the game is only won by checkmating both opponents. The board is bigger too, giving pawns ten squares to travel before they are promoted instead of eight.
Just like in life, he joked, your partner has their own agenda and can sometimes get in your way. He even suggests that teams use folding fans to plan their strategy in private.
Building it the right way
Max has copyrighted the board design, invested his own money in developing the app, and is also working on a four-player version of checkers. When he pitched on Pitch'd or Ditch'd, the investors challenged him on the business model and encouraged him to prove demand first by building a waiting list and pre-orders, advice he took with good humour.
For Max, the goal is the same as it was at his kitchen table: to make a classic game social, and something the whole family can play together.
Max Johnson Goldrich joined us on The Legacy Bench for Pitch'd or Ditch'd, "6 Entrepreneurs Pitch for £5,000 — Would You Invest?" — read the episode story or watch the full conversation.
