FOUNDER.EXE
A startup simulation where cash, compliance, product and people interact across the Türkiye and USA ecosystems.
Rules are more interesting than resources
Most business simulations model money and ignore institutions. The part that actually kills early companies — a tax deadline you did not diary, a company structure that blocks the financing you need, a hire that looks affordable until payroll lands — never appears.
FOUNDER.EXE encodes two real regulatory regimes as separate rule sets, so the same strategy produces different outcomes in Türkiye and the USA. The lesson is the divergence, not the score.
One monthly tick, four coupled dimensions
Cash, compliance, product and people are not independent bars to fill. Hiring shortens runway, shipping fast accrues technical debt, and a financing round dilutes the cap table you will care about later.
What is in the build
Structured lessons with career certification, playable outside a run.
Standalone situations you can attempt without a full campaign.
Türkiye and USA, with separate institutions and company structures.
Founder OS: a desktop metaphor rather than a menu stack.
Also included: live market data, an optional AI assistant, leaderboards, local saves with export and import, and accessibility modes covering high contrast and colour-blind palettes.
Delayed consequence as the core mechanic
The simulation is built around actions whose cost arrives late. Growth can hide a weak product for several months before churn makes it visible; shipping past a quality threshold builds technical debt that only bites when the team scales. A run that looks healthy on the dashboard can already be lost.