My friend worked with Travis back when Uber was just a proof of concept in San Francisco. They used private limos and a basic app to connect the two. It worked,

My friend worked with Travis back when Uber was just a proof of concept in San Francisco. They used private limos and a basic app to connect the two. It worked, was cheap to build, and they proved demand rather quickly. I would call that garage/seed stage. Airbnb was built and rebuilt several times with a few engineers in Brian Chesky’s apartment. They didn’t even have an official office for years at the beginning. Your example is gaming, but all game startups use Kickstarter now as a way to fund the project upfront. It’s not really the same type of business and games are usually one-off finishes products.