Context

It started as an ad idea for Plum: a founder trying to keep a startup alive through cash crunches, bad hires and angry investors. Halfway through the concept I thought, what if people could play this instead of watching it?

What I Built

• A retro arcade game for founders. Scale your startup to 50 employees without running out of cash, morale or quality.
• Every hire costs ₹2L of runway. Crises hit as you grow: investor demands, team conflicts, quality slipping.
• Three difficulty levels. The game ends with a founder score you can download and share.
• Built in code with Claude. Started on a Friday, shipped on a Monday.
• It's hard on purpose.

Outcome

• 4,000–5,000 people played it.
• Players shared their scores, which is where most of the traffic came from.

Play it

plumhq.com/startup-survivor