The Changing Startup Landscape According to Video Games

As we near the end of 2024, there’s an incredible amount of change happening in and around Startupland™. From recent elections to the ascendance of AI to venture capital’s changing of the guard, the landscape for startups tomorrow is likely to look very different from today.

The contemporary evolution of startups — in particular, the acceleration of certain parts of the founder journey — in many ways mirrors the evolution of video games.

Seriously.

So at the risk of publishing another one of those annoying “here are 5 things you can learn about X from Y” posts, here are 3 changes to the typical founder journey that mirror the evolution of video games.

1. Ramp Up Time

Real-time strategy (RTS) games have been in the mainstream for more than 30 years. They all follow a similar blueprint: gather resources, use those resources to build infrastructure and units, battle.

Early entries in the genre, such as Warcraft and Command & Conquer, provided players with a relatively lengthy ramp up period for each new game. Players would start each battle with minimal resources and have similar early capabilities. Regardless of which faction you chose, it would take time to amass enough resources to do much of anything — so you would have time to ramp up before the real battle began. While there was some strategy in terms of prioritizing what to build early-on, the first 3-5 minutes of almost every game was relatively benign (unless you played against that one jerk who would build 3 infantry units right away and rush to end it quick).

“Yes, milord”

Things changed in 1995 with the release of Starcraft. Up until that point, competing factions in RTS games all had basically equal capabilities. Units and buildings might have slightly different characteristics, but at the end of the day they were all about the same. Starcraft was the first RTS game to introduce velocity as a differentiating capability with the Zerg.

In Starcraft, the Zerg’s basic melee attacker (called zerglings) can be created at a 2:1 rate to those of other factions. As a result, the effective velocity at which zerglings can be spawned is double that of competing races. “Zerg rushes”, in which an army of zerglings are sent to attack an enemy relatively early in the game, was an infamous tactic in Starcraft.

The “zerg rush”

As more capabilities are unlocked over the course of a game, the races in Starcraft become more balanced (and, in fact, the Zerg are generally thought of as the weakest faction overall), but if you weren’t prepared to defend against a zerg rush at the start, you wouldn’t last long enough to find out.

What does this have to do with startups?

When I was a founder, we generally weren’t too concerned with how our velocity compared to that of other startups. We certainly kept tabs on them, but mostly we were heads down focused on our product and early customers. We would release our products when we felt they were ready and fundraise when the time made sense for us, without much regard for what others were doing. Our velocity came from internal pressures rather than external.

That’s no longer a luxury for most startup founders.

In an age of AI, cloud infrastructure and global competition, the competitive landscape has never been tougher — or faster. The difference between leader and too-late is now measured in months, not years. Whether it’s capturing public mindshare, securing early pilots or raising funding, founders can no longer afford to go at their own pace. More than ever, velocity is the metric that matters most.

2. Skills Development

The original Super Mario Bros., which will turn 40 next year (🤯), was the gateway drug for an entire generation of gamers. Its opening level (1 - 1) remains a master class in onboarding. It provided a safe space for players new to the game — many new to video games entirely — to figure out the mechanics of Super Mario’s gameplay.

Where it all started

For decades after the original Nintendo’s unveiling, most games used similar onboarding techniques to gradually introduce new players to game mechanics (often including increasingly powerful moves and weapons). From Metroid’s roll to Castlevania’s holy water to Contra’s increasingly absurd weapons, the approach to slowly-but-surely adding capabilities and complexities remains a fixture of video games to this day.

But in the late-80s, the discovery of a short sequence of button presses rocked our simple world…

The Konami Code

First introduced in the NES port of Gradius, the “Konami Code” provided instant power-ups to players. It became a worldwide phenomenon when it was later discovered in the hit-1988 game Contra and birthed the notion of the “cheat code”. (It wasn’t long after that the Game Genie was released, permanently shattering a generation’s innocence.)

Notably, it introduced the unheard of idea that players could start off a game with everything.

Fast forward to today and there are many games where it’s possible for players to leverage all of the capabilities from the start.

The same can be said of founders today.

The best first-time founders are more informed than ever before. As a result of a wide availability of blogs, newsletters and online courses, many young founders are fully-versed in startup best practices before ever leaving school. Competition amongst service providers has similarly enabled startups to unlock high-value resources and services long before they have a dollar in revenue (e.g. free cloud credits + implementation experts). The best founders have learned to leverage all of these capabilities and offerings to accelerate and compete right out of the gate.

In today’s world, founders hoping to move slow and steady, while learning one thing at a time, will be left in the dust.

Who wouldn’t want to play Fortnite as a gingerbread man?

3. Geographic Expansion

If you grew up in the 80s or 90s, you’re almost certain to have played the board game Risk. Each player starts off in a different country with a fixed number of pieces (each piece representing a different army unit). Over the course of the game, you increase the size of your army and slowly try to take over the world by expanding into adjacent countries.

This basic format of geographic expansion served as the inspiration for countless video games, including enduring franchises like Civilization and Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Civilization II, released back in 1996, introduced a new twist on the genre: the concept that a player’s choice of faction (nationality) would fundamentally impact their starting capabilities. Most strategy games released before then allowed players to select what country or region they would start in, but other than their placement on a map and some cosmetic differences, the choice had little impact on the game itself. Civilization II forced players to think carefully about the default strengths of each faction before the game even started.

The same is becoming true when it comes to founding startups.

In the past, there were geographic advantages that startups could leverage as they grew, but it really didn’t matter too much where you founded your company (at least, not until you needed to access capital). But with the world shifting away from globalization and returning to nationalistic tendencies, founders would be wise to give careful thought to where they incorporate their startup.

2025 America is likely to be the best place in the world to start companies in defensetech, aerospace and manufacturing. Climatetech and clean energy companies, on the other hand, may find better prospects in Canada and Europe (at least, when it comes to the availability of grants and supportive commercial prospects). Similarly, companies focused on privacy, DEI and improving the worker’ experience are likely to face headwinds in America but welcoming prospects in other countries.

Silicon Valley — and the United States more broadly — will undoubtedly continue to lead the world’s innovation economy, but with industry and politics becoming ever more intertwined when it comes to tech, not all starting points will be equal.

Sid Meier’s view of America in 2016. What will 2025 look like?

So there you have it. Three ways in which the evolution of startups mirrors that of video games.

Not too much of a stretch.

…or have I been hitting the eggnog too hard…?