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Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)

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Ask HN: What games let you simulate running a startup?

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Ask HN: What games let you simulate running a startup?

12•tbwriting•3d ago
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!

Comments

whb101•3d ago
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!

mostlystatic•6h ago
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.

eimrine•3d ago
"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.
sema4hacker•3d ago
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•3d ago
Starcraft II
PretzelJudge•2d ago
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.
shahbaby•12h ago
This guy startups.
ChrisGermano•2d ago
It's not exactly what you're looking for but Game Dev Tycoon is very enjoyable if you want to experience a video game startup. Checks most boxes, not the most realistic but enough.
FlopV•1d ago
That druglord game from 20 years ago haha
fosco•19h ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21504023
quodlibet•13h ago
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