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Venture

How it works

The whole game is one quarter, repeated until it ends.

There is no hidden scoring trick and no secret correct path. What follows is the loop, the numbers the simulation keeps, the conditions that open later content, and exactly what the three difficulties change.

Step by step

The quarterly loop

Eight steps, in this order, every quarter. The first one happens whether you like it or not.

  1. 1

    The quarter opens

    Delayed consequences due this turn resolve. Market and industry conditions are rolled. Financials are recomputed from the opening snapshot.

  2. 2

    The state is presented

    Quarter, stage, cash, revenue, runway, and the health of the company — before you are asked for anything.

  3. 3

    One decision is offered

    A weighted selector picks a single eligible scenario from the library, or a systemic market event. Never both in the same quarter.

  4. 4

    You commit

    You confirm, the options lock, and the server validates that the playthrough is yours and that this is genuinely the open decision.

  5. 5

    Effects apply

    Immediate effects apply atomically, with a snapshot taken before and after, so the quarter can be read back exactly as it happened.

  6. 6

    A consequence is scheduled

    A delayed event is queued for a turn inside that scenario’s resolution window. You are not told which turn.

  7. 7

    The quarter closes

    The financial statement is computed, the timeline is appended, stage eligibility is re-evaluated, and ending conditions are checked.

  8. 8

    The next quarter opens

    And the consequences you scheduled start arriving.

Progression

Twelve stages, and what opens each one

A stage unlocks when every one of its conditions holds. Turn count alone never unlocks anything, and once a stage is open its content keeps recurring, weighted toward where the company is now.

  1. 1FoundationUnlocked from the first quarter.
  2. 2Market ValidationCompany age one quarter.
  3. 3Product & OfferTwo Market Validation decisions resolved, and market knowledge 35.
  4. 4Business ModelTen customers or any revenue, and product quality 35.
  5. 5Go-to-MarketProduct quality 45 and twenty-five customers.
  6. 6OperationsEighty customers, or four people.
  7. 7Team & CultureFive people.
  8. 8Finance & FundingAge four quarters, and either $150k annual revenue or financing readiness 55.
  9. 9Growth & ScaleAnnual revenue $1.2M, four hundred customers, product quality 55, eight people, and three Go-to-Market or Business Model decisions resolved.
  10. 10Risk & CrisisRisk exposure 45, or nine months of runway or less, or a systemic event has fired.
  11. 11Turnaround & ExitAge eight quarters, with either six months of runway or less, $5M annual revenue, or investor confidence 70.
  12. 12Strategy & LeadershipAge six quarters, six people, and six decisions resolved.

Risk & Crisis content is withheld until the company is actually exposed — high risk, short runway, or a systemic event that has already fired.

What is measured

Eleven metrics, each 0 to 100

Alongside the concrete numbers — cash in integer cents, customers, employees, ownership in basis points — the simulation keeps eleven normalised metrics. Choices move them; they in turn move churn, margin, event odds and financing.

Product quality
Fit and reliability. Lifts acquisition and suppresses churn.
Demand
How many people want it. The main input to customer acquisition.
Brand trust
Stakeholder confidence. What carries you through a bad quarter.
Team morale
Execution capacity. Low morale raises the odds of a delayed failure.
Operations
Delivery reliability. Strong operations lift gross margin and absorb complexity.
Focus
Organisational clarity. Complexity is what takes it away.
Market knowledge
What you have actually verified about the market, as opposed to assumed.
Compliance
Legal and regulatory standing. Suppresses regulatory surprises.
Risk exposureWarningHigh is bad
Legal, operational and concentration exposure.
Execution speed
How quickly a decision becomes shipped work.
Investor confidence
What the people who funded you believe. Feeds financing readiness.

Note Risk exposure is the exception. On every other metric a higher number is better. On risk exposure a higher number is worse, so the game shows it with its own wording — low, moderate, elevated, high — never as a score to raise.

Why the same quarter resolves the same way

Every random draw is seeded from the playthrough, the kind of draw, and the turn number. Reloading the page does not reroll a delayed outcome, and replaying a quarter produces the same market, the same scenario and the same roll. That is deliberate: a quarter that cannot be reproduced cannot be explained to the player it happened to.

Difficulty

Three settings, and exactly what each changes

Difficulty is chosen once, during incorporation. It does not change the content of a decision or hide a correct answer — it changes starting cash, how violently the market moves, how often consequences land badly, and how much warning you get.

Values read directly from the shipped balance configuration.
What it changesGuidedFounderRuthless
Starting cashApplied to whatever your capital path provides.+35%Baseline−20%
Market volatilityHow far demand, costs and valuations swing each quarter.0.6×Baseline (1.0×)1.5×
Adverse delayed outcomesAdded to the resolved probability of the bad branch.−5 pointsUnchanged+8 points
Systemic eventsRecessions, regulation, supplier failure, and the rest.0.8×Baseline (1.0×)1.3×
Insolvency graceQuarters you may run on negative cash before it is over.2 quarters1 quarterNone
Rescue financingDilutive, expensive, and offered at most this often.2 offers1 offerNone
Consequence cuesWhat you are told about a choice before you make it.Trade-offs described in words before you commitMinimal — the prompt and nothing moreNone
Scenario mixHow strongly each scenario difficulty is weighted in selection.Easy 1.5×, medium 1.4×, hard 0.5×Easy 1.0×, medium 1.0×, hard 1.0×Easy 0.6×, medium 0.7×, hard 1.6×
Legacy scoreApplied to the final score, for the record.×0.80×1.00×1.25

Scenario weights change which cases you are more likely to be offered, not what the cases say. Ruthless does not add content; it leans the selector toward the hard end of the library and removes the safety net.

Limits

What the game does not claim

This matters more than the feature list. A simulation built on real cases has to be clear about where the research ends.

Methodology and sources
  • That an option the real company did not take would have changed what happened to it. The alternatives are game design; the history is cited separately.
  • That the numbers attached to a choice are measured effects. They are balancing points, tuned for play.
  • That the probability on a delayed outcome was derived from research. It is a design parameter, editable, and visible to the people who maintain the content.
  • That a case is a complete corporate history. Each one identifies a pivotal choice documented by its source. Business outcomes are multi-causal.
  • That the simulation predicts a real market, values a real company, or constitutes financial, legal or business advice.
  • That an acquisition is the good ending. The legacy score weighs proceeds against longevity, jobs, customers, reputation, resilience and innovation, and a durable private company can outscore a sale.
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