San Fran Sim
San Fran Sim is a satirical startup simulator that puts you in the shoes of a founder building a company from a garage in the heart of tech culture. Navigate the volatile journey from zero MRR to potential success while managing cash burn, team dynamics, product development, and the existential dread of runway math. Every decision shapes your rollercoaster MRR chart as you grind through the absurd realities of startup life.
Product Highlights
- Authentic Startup Mechanics: Track real metrics including runway, burn rate, MRR growth, and team velocity measured in story points per day
- Strategic Decision-Making: Balance growth, retention, monetization, infrastructure, and delight while managing technical debt and feature prioritization
- Dynamic Market Conditions: Experience seasonal shifts like "AI Summer" that impact your startup's trajectory and opportunities
- Team Management Simulation: Hire engineers, manage founder energy levels, and optimize output while avoiding "Pivot Sickness" from cancelled features
- Sponsor-Driven Economy: Engage with a unique in-game advertising system where real-world sponsor slots provide gameplay blessings
Use Cases
- Aspiring Founders: Experience the emotional and strategic pressures of startup life before committing real capital, learning to read metrics and make trade-offs under uncertainty
- Startup Veterans: Find cathartic humor in accurately portrayed rituals like refactoring sprints, roadmap planning, and the eternal optimism of projected impact charts
- Business Educators: Use as an interactive teaching tool for entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and product management concepts in classrooms or accelerator programs
- Team Building: Play with co-founders or colleagues to spark conversations about prioritization, resource allocation, and the shared trauma of building companies
Target Audience
San Fran Sim speaks directly to founders, operators, and obsessives of startup culture who appreciate dark humor about venture capital, the absurdity of tech industry tropes, and games that treat business strategy as legitimate entertainment. If you've ever calculated runway in your head for fun, this is your simulator.