Show HN: A game where you invest into startups from history | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A game where you invest into startups from history

startupgambit.com

43 pointsvire0036 comments

I think the forced countdown is a bit unfriendly, especially when LLM delays eat the majority of that. Perhaps limit it to X questions.

Also, having a min / max funding range (e.g, min 100K, max 500K). I might not want to wager the same on each opportunity.

It might also be interesting to base it off real companies. Scramble the names (Paypal -> CashMate or whatever. Enough that the player doesn't know for sure what company its based on. ATi vs nVidia for eg), and also allow investment at multiple points in time. Pre-crash vs post-crash might yield significantly different ROI outcomes.

Thanks for feedback. The successful startups are actually always based of real companies for example ClaritySearch = Google. I'll try to make that part clearer.

Not playable on mobile browser

Mobile is next!

Fun game! My investing strategy is to flush out quickly who's the team, what's the traction, what's unique insight into the market.

Bullshitters have trash or no answers. Killer companies have one of those 3 that is usually very compelling.

i've asked who's the team 3 times and always got "can't disclose." i figured this was a limitation of the game. do some answer?

I do get answers. The ones who typically said can't disclose are you full of shit. Crack teams know they're cracked and they will tell you.

"I'm a MIT-trained security engineer; I'm an ex-VP at Paypal, etc..."

This is a genuinely great use of LLMs/related technology. Dynamic characters you can have conversations with to make game choices more informed is a really cool idea, actually feels original and clever. I really enjoyed playing it.

Thanks :)

Stopped / crashed Dec 31 2005 with $358K return. Cannot proceed. Fun until then.

Same - I think that's the end of the game (so far?)

Yea it ends on that date. I cashed out with $622K

Yep the game has only 5 years so far.

It was supposed to show "end of demo, please sign up". Welp there goes potential users :D

nice game - but you need a UX designer. Almost abandoned it since I thought it was broken... I just didnt know what I was waiting for or didnt know where to click.

Noted, actually UX & appearance was the next thing on my TO-DO list

I need to be able to type faster, just got done chatting with Mark and I completely missed the opportunity to invest in Quibi.

Pretty fun! Only complaint is that the responses from the founders take a bit long to load.

I tried investing in every pitch I got, which seems to be a positive strategy.

Re: backtesting and paper trading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38908537 :

> pyfolio.tears.create_interesting_times_tear_sheet

Love it! Very smart! Are all the company names real?

I'm pretty sure they aren't. I invested in what was obviously Facebook under a different name.

I got "SalesForce" at one point.

No but the successful ones are always inspired by something. Eg. Google, Paypal etc.

fun, but it seems if I just invest in everything I don't lose.

I get 3x/4x return on a lot of things but only lose <1x if its a bad investment

You might like this, which has greater penalties for bad investments: https://tools.encona.com/investor

At least disclose that it's yours.

Also spam 90% and you're basically guaranteed profit, I did it like 10 times.

Illegible in Safari on iPhone :(

Not for long!

very cool game! needs some juice.

https://garden.bradwoods.io/notes/design/juice

also, add a leaderboard

Reading it now. This is really useful.

This is pretty fun!

Damn. Now I understand VC's a little better.

Some deals I saw "damn the traction is off the chart" and I didn't even care to ask any question I just threw money at them. I saw one startup named Salesforce, a CRM. I guess hindsight is 20/20 on that one lol. Didn't even read the pitch.

This game is awesome

Nice

This is fantastic. It's pretty frustrating for founders to flat-out refuse to answer questions though, I'd probably make that more subtle

Thanks. Yeah right now they refuse usually when they don't know the answer. Will polish that part more.

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