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Show HN: I built a game where you guess which startup idea succeeded
I’ve been studying real-world SaaS ideas — some that took off, others that failed hard. I turned it into a small side project: StartUp or Flop?
You get two real startup ideas. One became successful, the other didn’t. You guess which is which, then you get the actual answer plus a short explanation of what made it work (or not).
It’s a lightweight way to learn from real startup outcomes, uncover the patterns behind success and failure, sharpen your product instinct — and maybe even confront some of your own startup biases along the way. It’s surprising, humbling, and kind of addictive.
Would love your feedback! https://www.startuporflop.com/ https://www.startuporflop.com/
- Belsonsan 1y agoey folks — I'm Henri, a solo dev and product enthusiast based in Europe. I built this mostly for myself at first, as a way to train my product intuition and avoid falling in love with my own startup ideas too quickly. I’ve made some bad bets in the past (who hasn’t?), and I realized how easy it is to assume we know what works just because something sounds smart. I wanted a fun way to challenge that — to learn from real examples without reading 50 postmortems. Would love to hear what you think, especially if you’ve built something or are in the early stages of a project.
- kartik_malik 1y agoFor really, I don't understand the use case.
- Belsonsan 1y agoTotally fair — it's not meant to be a “tool” in the traditional sense. The idea is to help founders, builders, or even curious observers sharpen their instincts by exposing them to real startup ideas and outcomes. A lot of people (myself included) get caught up thinking “this idea has to work,” and this game shows how often that intuition is wrong — and why. It’s lightweight, educational, and honestly a bit humbling. Kind of like flashcards for product thinking. Appreciate the honest feedback!
- r-johnv 1y agoIt was a fun browse through. I actually went through all 50. I think you might have a bug in the counter though. It counts the number that you get right (I think), and loops back to repeat the first question until you have 50 correct answers. The ad popup felt way too frequent though. It broke the flow. Once would have been enough IMHO.
- Belsonsan 1y agoey, really appreciate you checking it out — cool to hear you went through all 50! Yeah, the counter is based on correct answers, so if you get a few wrong, it loops to make sure you hit 50 right. I agree it’s a bit confusing, definitely something I need to fix. And fair point on the ad — I was testing it quickly, but yeah, it breaks the flow. I’ll tone it down or rethink how to do that better. Thanks again for the feedback — super helpful!
- sometimes_all 1y agoHi Henri, the game was a lot of fun! There were multiple surprises for me along the way, definitely gave me enough to think about. A couple minor nits (after playing on mobile): 1. After hitting 40 correct answers, the right/wrong emojis weren't showing up next to the options after selecting one of them as they used to from Q1 to Q40. The only way for me to find out whether I was correct was to see whether the right answer count went up or not. 2. Apologies I don't have an example, but for a couple of questions, it felt that both options described a successful startup; while the startup listed in the explanation might have failed, there was at least one other startup with the same/similar description which had succeeded. Might want to look a bit more into that. Otherwise good game and great book recommendations!
- Belsonsan 1y agothanks will fix that today, I really like that you really played the game :D