A free game to practise the expensive calls, before it’s your money

Short answer: I built a free game where you get US$500k and twelve weeks to run an AI startup. Each week you make one big call, and I tell you straight whether it cost you. It’s free, there’s no sign-up, and it takes about 25 minutes. If you’ve only got five minutes, there’s now a weekly crisis you can play on your phone.

Play the 12-Week Accelerator, free →

Why I built it

I’ve watched a lot of founders and business owners spend their runway building things nobody wanted. Smart people, good teams. They just made the expensive calls before the cheap ones.

So I built a game where you can make those mistakes with someone else’s money.

How it works

You pick one of four AI startups: a bike light that spots cars, an app that turns a photo of your fridge into dinner, an AI agent that chases invoices for tradies, or a floor-cleaning robot you rent by the month.

Each week you plan a sprint, open a real case file, like the Palm Pilot’s block of wood, Dropbox’s demo video or Humane’s AI Pin, and make one big call. Every call costs cash, buys evidence, or both.

Your co-founder Rex wants fourteen features. Vale the investor wants evidence. You can’t give both.

What’s new

• A 5-minute crisis you can play on your phone. Three calls, swipe to decide. There’s a new one every Monday.
• How other players called it. After every verdict you can see what everyone else picked.

Try this week’s 5-minute crisis →

What it has to do with your own build

The game rewards the same thing I’d tell you over a coffee: get evidence before you pay for features. Test small, sell it by hand if you can, and only build what people are already paying for.

If you’ve got a real quote on your desk, the kit Before You Pay a Developer walks you through what to ask, what to check and what has to be in your name. If you want me to look at the whole thing with you, that’s the Build Case.

And if you play the game, tell me how far you got.