POWER LAW, a San Francisco career simulator
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POWERLAW<br>a San Francisco career simulator<br>five years, or twenty<br>about
HOW IT WORKS
You get one decision a year.
San Francisco gives you five years , or twenty if you have the time. You pick who you<br>are and what you do, then make one decision a year until the time runs out.<br>Almost nobody gets the outcome they came for.
1 You choose, then the year happens.<br>Stay and vest, or leave for the company nobody has heard of. Post the thread<br>or log off. Take the salary or take the equity. Then the game rolls the year<br>and shows you the dice it used.
2 Six numbers decide what you get offered.<br>Leverage, followers, network, integrity, burnout and vesting. Hover any of<br>them once the run starts and the game tells you exactly what it does.
3 The companies are real and so is the timing.<br>Everything up to 2026 happened, down to who founded it and what they raised.<br>Somebody will show you the thing before it is obviously the thing, and you<br>decide in the room, blind, the way they did. About half turn out to be nothing.
4 Money is not the same as paper.<br>Equity is worth the last mark until somebody buys it, and most never converts.<br>At the end the game prices your number against somewhere to live.
I'M IN
PICK WHO I AM<br>Seventeen starting positions, and the twenty-year game.
enter starts the whole game plays from the keyboard
What the game gives you
An era. One is open: 2022, the year FTX evaporates and ChatGPT<br>ships three weeks later.
Who you are. Seventeen starting positions, from a Stanford dropout<br>to a no-name from Europe with no visa. This decides more than it should,<br>which is the point.
What you do. Engineer, designer, PM, growth, sales or ops. Each<br>grows a different number and hits a different ceiling.
Nobody yet<br>starting 2022<br>before year one
Leverage·
Twitter followers·
Net worth·
Network·
Integrity·
Burnout risk·
Vesting·
BEFORE YOU START
Who are you, and what do you do?
Your name
Start year
How long you play
Who you are
What you do
START THE RUN<br>enter starts the run
Where this puts you
at ·<br>about
Leverage·
Twitter followers·
Net worth·
Network·
Integrity·
Burnout risk·
Vesting·
PLAY THE YEAR
The timeline
YC INTERVIEW
50
energy 100%
What you have left
END OF RUN
THE RECEIPTS
POST IT<br>COPY CARD<br>COPY CHALLENGE LINK<br>DOWNLOAD PNG<br>SHARE<br>RUN IT AGAIN
1200×630, posts full-width on Twitter. On a phone, long-press the card to save it.
Year by year
×<br>About
POWER LAW
Is San Francisco a meritocracy?
Everybody has a theory about it. Nobody gets to run the experiment twice.<br>So run it here: pick where you came from, pick what you do, and play the<br>years out. Then change one thing and play it again.
Seventeen ways to arrive. A Stanford dropout, a Waterloo engineer,<br>a no-name from Europe with no visa. Same city, wildly different odds.
Five years, or twenty. One decision each. Stay or leave, ship or<br>post, take the salary or take the equity.
Real companies, real timing. Somebody offers you the thing before<br>anyone knows it is the thing, and you answer in the room.
Then do it again as somebody else and see how much of it was you.
2,313,360<br>distinct careers it can tell apart
Fiction, played on a real map. Everything to 2026 is public<br>record; everything after it is invented, and none of it is a claim about<br>any real person or company.
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