You had a vision.
Then six customers explained why it was wrong.
Startup pain, finally playable.
Fill in the blank, play your funniest answer, and let one wildly unqualified judge pick the winner.
3–8 players · no account · first round in a minute
No credit card required. No SAFE either.
We raised $4M to discover customers wanted ________.
Cards Against Startups
Excel.
Cards Against Startups
01 / Why this exists
You've suffered enough.
Monetize it.
You survived the pivot, the rebrand, the AI rebrand, the emergency board meeting, and Chad explaining that your problem is actually distribution. Now turn the pain into points.
You added an agent.
Congratulations. The valuation has been automatically updated.
“Keep us posted.”
The three most terrifying words in venture capital.
02 / Sample cards
Carefully researched by avoiding actual work.
Click an answer. There are no wrong choices, only increasingly uncomfortable eye contact with your cofounder.
PROMPT CARD · #0087
Our competitive moat is ________.
Cards Against StartupsROUND 03/10
03 / Market status
Unfortunately, startups keep writing our jokes.
The deck evolves with startup culture. New buzzword, new card. New catastrophe, expansion pack.
STARTUP_MARKET_STATUS.exeLIVE*
▲ +841%▁▂▃▂▅▆█
Founder confidence
Revenue correlation remains unproven.
▼ -73%█▇▆▅▃▂▁
Runway
The office kombucha survived cuts.
▲ +1200%▁▁▂▃▅▇█
AI agents
Humans remain in the loop emotionally.
● FLAT▃▃▃▃▃▃▃
Customers
Still the same four people.
▲ ATH▂▃▃▅▆▇█
LinkedIn humility
Everyone is humbled and excited.
▼ RIP█▅▃▂▁▁▁
Work-life balance
Deprecated in beta.4.
* Data sourced from vibes, founder group chats, and one chart without an axis.
04 / How to play
Entrepreneurship is complicated. This isn't.
No onboarding call. No 14-step procurement process. No one asks about your TAM.
1
Gather terrible people.
Friends, founders, investors, coworkers, or that one person who keeps asking about your moat.
2
Read a prompt.
Try not to make eye contact with the person whose company is obviously being described.
3
Submit your worst answer.
Ethics are discouraged. HR participation is optional but highly dangerous.
4
Pick a winner.
Selection is arbitrary and one person has too much power. Congratulations, you're now a VC.
05 / Ideal customer profile
There's a card for every kind of delusion.
You gave up weekends.
And financial stability. And a normal relationship with Slack. You deserve this.
Finally, real diligence.
Judge founders using a process only slightly less scientific than your current one.
Yes, there's vibe coding.
Technical debt is still debt, even when Claude wrote it in 11 seconds.
There are no users here either.
But we made a roadmap, six personas, and a beautiful Figma prototype.
Attribution is working.
As long as nobody asks where the customers actually came from.
Cheaper than an offsite.
Potentially more expensive after the investigation. Terms apply.
06 / Social proof*
Loved by highly credible imaginary people.
*We plan to replace these with real testimonials right after we get real customers.
“We played this during our offsite. There is no longer an offsite.”
VP People
Series B company
“The card about bridge rounds felt unnecessarily targeted.”
Anonymous founder
Currently raising
“Strong team. Large market. Too early for us.”
Partner
Firm you've definitely heard of
07 / The physical deck
Take your trauma offline.
Hundreds of startup-specific cards covering fundraising, AI, engineering, growth, hiring, investors, and the many creative ways founders avoid admitting they have no customers.
No screens. No notifications. No AI copilots.
Just people disappointing each other manually.
the metrics missing from the investor update
I am humbled and excited to announce ________.
our Series A deck named FINAL_
08 / Extremely urgent CTA
Stop building. Start playing.
Your backlog will still be there tomorrow. Probably twice as large.