Gamifying the startup journey for early-stage founders.
01
About StartupGame
Transforming dry business education into a retro web game for early-stage founders.
Startup Mission is a gamification platform designed to help early-stage startup founders navigate the chaotic journey of building a business. Through distinct lands and interactive missions, players take on the role of a bootstrapping founder (Sarcastic Cat) to learn crucial business strategies through interactive dialogue, rich storytelling, and dynamic quizzes, all guided by their mentor, Skelly.
02
The Challenge
When static startup support leaves real founders behind.
Traditional startup incubators rely heavily on two-hour daytime webinars, dense PDFs, and rigid lectures. For non-traditional founders juggling day jobs, caring responsibilities, or unconventional paths, these traditional support structures are often inaccessible, jargon-heavy, and uninspiring.
Lucy Heskins, the brains behind Startup Mission wanted to disrupt this model completely. She needed a platform that replaced theoretical lectures with active gameplay, rewarding founders with real-world mentorship hours while giving programme leads a simple way to track cohort progress
03
Our Solution
An arcade-style world for founders, and real insight for programme leads.
We designed and built a desktop web app that blends 2D arcade mechanics with lightweight web graphics. Using React Three Fibre and a Laravel backend, we created an interactive world where founders navigate character movement, tackle quiz-style challenges, and dodge bad business advice from Alan, an anti-hero who represents taking shortcuts in business.
Alongside the core player experience, we built a B2B admin dashboard for programme leads. This dual-purpose platform allows incubator managers to issue bulk invite codes, monitor completion rates across their cohorts, and export participant insights, all while founders earn points that convert into 1-to-1 industry mentorship.
04
Impact & Highlights
Stage-Adaptive Gameplay & Mechanics:
We developed a variety of interactive challenges, including LLM-analysed open questions, target-shooting minigames, and maze escapes, turning routine business validation into an active, rewarding routine.
Custom Animation & World UI:
Our design team brought the brand illustrations to life by producing fluid character movement loops, interaction triggers, and dynamic dialogue systems for Skelly, Sarcastic Cat, and Alan.
Performant Web Architecture:
By pairing React Three Fibre and THREE.js on the frontend with a Laravel and Livewire backend, we delivered a fast desktop gaming experience with low load times and efficient data management.
Building impactful, clean-coded software for the next generation of founders.
Combining retro arcade nostalgia with modern web frameworks was easily one of the most creative challenges our team took on this year. Building a platform that makes startup advice accessible, fair, and genuinely entertaining proved just how powerful gamification can be when backed by clean code.
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Working with Seedable has been thorough, systematic and fun, and I know that my product is in great hands.
Lucy Heskins
Founder of Startup Mission
