How a Craigslist Skee-Ball Machine Turned into an Empire

Joey Mucha didn’t start with a business plan. He started with a skee-ball machine in his apartment.

By day, he worked in marketing at a small startup in San Francisco. By night and weekend, he was quietly building something else—renting out arcade games to parties around the city. He didn’t need office space. He didn’t have overhead. He borrowed Zipcars, stored the machines in his apartment, and moved them himself.

“I had a day job. I had the comfort of my salary,” he says. “And then in my nights and weekends did an incredibly lean equipment rental business.”

He wasn’t trying to build the next big thing. He was just following what felt interesting—and what made money.

His first invoice was $450. The machine had cost $500 on eBay. The rental van? $73. It only took two or three rentals to become cash flow positive. That was enough to keep going.

But Joey’s story doesn’t start with entrepreneurship. It starts with competition.

When he moved to San Francisco, he joined a local skee-ball league to meet people. What started as a social outlet turned into something else entirely.

“Full disclosure, the first machine I purchased was to get better at the game of skee-ball,” he says. “The landscape had leagues nationwide and an annual national championship. I went to the first and lost in the third round to Skee Diddy—and I never wanted that feeling again.”

So he trained. Practiced. Got serious.

“I put a skee-ball machine in my apartment. I studied the game. Got really good.”

He went back, and this time, he won. He used the prize money to buy more machines. Then won again. In total, he’s now a three-time national champion, with a full-blown personal brand—Joey the Cat—that started on the skee-ball lane and became the foundation of his business.

“I hired a designer to make a brand as I was going into the next national championships to impress my competition and scare them,” he says. “Then used that brand for the business, too.”

Joey the Cat wasn’t a persona—it was the business. And it worked.

“If I was just a random vanilla arcade operator, you’d never remember me. But when someone says multiple-time national champion skee-ball player Joey the Cat is renting us a skee-ball machine… that has a little bit more cache.”

The rentals expanded. One machine became two. Two became ten. Parties led to bar partnerships. Bar partnerships led to routes—locations where Joey would install and maintain arcade games in exchange for a share of the revenue.

And eventually, he had a decision to make.

“The startup I worked for got acquired. I used some of the proceeds to buy more equipment. Then it happened again. Second acquisition. And I had the option to either go work for a big publicly traded company—or double down on my side hustle and become a full-time founder.”

He chose the business.

Today, Joey the Cat operates arcade games at 40 locations between San Francisco and Los Angeles. He has deep partnerships with a handful of top-tier venues—places like Thriller Social Club in SF and Eastwood in LA—and a growing footprint that came not from cold calls, but from reputation.

“This is not a typical bulldozer sales methodology business for me,” he says. “It was really building relationships with bar owners I respected. People I wanted to work with. Everything they touched turned to gold, and I wanted to partner with them.”

He kept his operation lean. Reinvested profits. Expanded deliberately.

Eventually, he needed a permanent space—not just for events, but to store and repair his machines. That’s when the second half of the business came into focus.

“There’s the arcade route, which is me putting games in bars and venues,” he says. “And then there’s the event venue business, which is my wholly owned and operated arcade space.”

That space, now open in San Francisco’s Mission District, is called Joey the Cat’s Mission Arcade. It’s part arcade, part event venue, 100% passion project.

“It was a labor of love,” he says. “Permitting, construction, architecture, general contractors. I’m running my arcade business, doubling down on valuable partnerships, but also shifting 70% of my energy over to perfecting the sales process and selling events.”

He’s relaunching the brand. Rebuilding the website. Hosting open houses. Pitching to office managers, event planners, and anyone looking for something a little different than a rooftop with sliders and a drink ticket.

And he’s still in it. Still hands-on. Still knows more than anyone about what makes an arcade game sing.

“There’s a game that I think is almost there—Connect Four Basketball,” he says. “It’s a game of arcade hoops and Connect Four at the same time. My wife’s amazing at Connect Four. I’m solid at basketball. It’s an equalizer.”

He lights up talking about it. Not because it’s part of the growth strategy. But because he still genuinely loves this stuff.

He didn’t get here by going big. He got here by starting small. By renting one machine. Practicing one shot. Closing one deal. And then another.

Joey the Cat didn’t try to reinvent the wheel.

He just gave it a fresh coat of paint, hauled it into a bar, and made sure it worked better than anyone else could.

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