Version 10 | Foundational Work in Startups — Decreasing Time Cost for Founders
Even with the advent of ChatGPT and other AI tools, a founder still needs an army to run a startup. In fact, having a solid early-stage team is one of the main driving forces behind every successful venture.
The early stage team is like a symphony of brilliance, each instrument playing a unique role, harmonising to create something truly remarkable. From the leaders who ignite the spark of innovation to the experts who lend their expertise and the hustlers who execute with drive — the early-stage team is one of the main catalysts that propel dreams into reality.
Hiring is not the founder’s only role here, but establishing a foundational base is crucial. Just like in the case of a building, if the foundation of a building is weak, the building might seem sturdy in the early days, but slowly and slowly, cracks will begin to appear that would ultimately jeopardise the whole project.
Similarly, a startup founder should focus on foundational work that would give the startup direction, an efficient process, and proper communication between the founder and the early-stage team members before or while hiring the founding team members.
This is one of the core activities a startup founder should do, and hence, I decided to include this in Startup High.
I had the problem of finding a use case for the money resource instead of just freelancing, but the idea of including the option of hiring early-stage team members would be an excellent alternative to freelancing.
Introducing a Player Board to Hire Team Members
Each entrepreneur has an individual Player Board through which they keep track of their employees. You can hire team members and get hourly benefits through them while paying for the Work Card. There are 4 departments in total:
- Research
- Design
- Technology
- Marketing
Each department has 4 levels of employees, from Level 1 to Level 4, and each level has its own monetary cost and hourly benefit. You cannot jump to any level directly and have to move in ascending order only. For example, suppose an entrepreneur has to hire a level 3 employee from a level 1 employee. In that case, the entrepreneur has to hire the level 2 employee first.
Research and Marketing are general skills, whereas Design and Technology are specialised skills, and hence the cost and the benefit offered by the various skill levels of Research and Marketing are less than that of the specialised ones.
How does hiring employees exactly work?
Suppose person C has a Marketing employee level 1 who offers a 1-hour benefit on every Work Card. C draws a Marketing Work Card of 9 hours. If C decides to buy this Work Card, it will cost him 8 hours. However, if C pays $5432, hires an employee in Marketing, and moves to Level 2, he would now be getting a benefit of 3 hours. Hence, the Marketing Work Card would cost him only 6 hours now.
Introducing this feature in the game would allow for good utilisation of money and also present an engine builder in the game. Additionally, this would make the Freelancing aspect of the game an add-on feature that can bring the element of negotiation into the game.
The assumption this game takes is that every founder has built on an excellent foundational base for their early team members to come in and start helping them right away. By immersing themselves in the foundational work, founders deeply understand the business processes, product development, and operational intricacies.
This helps them guide, train, and set up processes for their early-stage team members to come in, fit quickly, and benefit almost immediately. And if you see, it is more often than not a time benefit that your employee provides for you, for they save you time doing the same thing.
I am excited to playtest and try this version out. If you want to playtest Startup High, please join this Whatsapp Group. I update this group with regular playtests for everyone to be a part of it!
To all the people reading this without reading the previous articles, I am in the middle of making a startup-themed board game. I am documenting my progress as I move forward. I keep discussing the various roadblocks, the attempted solutions and my next step through these articles.
The game aims to get entrepreneurship and startup into the mainstream, and board games are an excellent way to do it. If you like the idea or want to contribute, please visit entrepi.world and contact us!
