HACKER Q&A
📣 tbwriting

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!


  👤 eimrine Accepted Answer ✓
"Porn manager" - be a manager of porn studio, hire models, choose genres etc. The game becomes hard after the studio becomes big enough because of too many needs to be remembered. Sorry but the game is j2me only, requires something like Nokia S40 or Siemens *75. I don't even trying to find it, I have no compatible devices any more.

👤 whb101
Funny 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!


👤 sema4hacker
Other than being a list of all the details you need to pay attention to, wouldn't a simulation ultimately hinge on how well your product or service is received? Are you going to pretend your sales are terrific?

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_distribution_game


👤 wizviper
Starcraft II

👤 PretzelJudge
You 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.