Ask HN: What games let you simulate running a startup? I've found leads here and there, nothing that really captures it though - specifically key aspects like hiring, raising funding, and such. I figured if any community knew of good ones I missed, it would be this one! |
Let me know what you think - it hasn't had intensive play by a ton of users yet, so feedback is very welcome!
I read bits of the instruction guide a couple times, but some things that weren't super clear at first:
1. I didn't realize how important it is to raise another round. Is there ever a reason not to? The money bag was a small little thing, and I didn't know to click on it before reading the guide.
2. 90% monthly churn seems pretty bad... but maybe it isn't? Not sure what to do about it, improve the product maybe? Should you be doing marketing before product market fit?
3. At first (when I didn't read the guide) I thought marketers help us get customers. But I think they just reduce CAC?
4. Once you have a larger team it gets very heavy on the "Build" clicking. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GRpxPfcpAjWem-3gs2Tnd_5xDwF...
5. Do the tasks matter? I never figured out the what the numbers mean. I never deleted any of them - should I?
6. Do ops people do anything?
7. Task velocity is a bit unclear, and the onboarding is only tied to the blue bar if you read the guide. Would be nice to show on hover maybe, and could show some sort of aggregate across your team?
8. Do I get anything for investing in my product? Does the product get better over time in some way? Would be nice to track that.
The infamous "beer distribution game" shows how difficult it is to simulate and manage an almost trivial supply chain. I would expect trying to simulate an entire startup would have so many variables that any simulation would only end up predicting real world performance purely by chance.