I played around building a game like that a while ago. Not quite finished, and I didn't spend any time on it recently.
https://attic-byte.itch.io/tech-mogul-game
Ask HN: What games let you simulate running a startup?
11–13 of 13 posts
Re: Ask HN: What games let you simulate running a startup?
#12You can easily simulate an early stage startup by getting together with some friends and each of you calls random people from the phonebook, tries to sell them a product that they don’t want right now and then gets hung up on. The winner is the one who persists the longest after repeated failure.
This guy startups.
Re: Ask HN: What games let you simulate running a startup?
#13Funny you should ask, I just finished building one: https://startupsimulator.com Let me know what you think - it hasn't had intensive play by a ton of users yet, so feedback is very welcome!
It's pretty fun, made it to the $1B valuation on my last attempt :)
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.