Startup investment opportunities

Digital Age DLC for Capitalism Lab
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eleaza
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Re: Startup investment opportunities

Post by eleaza »

andypandy wrote:I think I have a decent idea for a fun feature in the new DLC. Here's how it would work:

You either get prompted by messages, or bring up an actual menu to see available investment opportunities at any time, but basically, the message will read something like a new tech company is looking to raise money. You can invest money, and get a % of the business. If they are looking to raise $50mil for 20% and you invest $25mil, then you get 10%. The other businesses and private people can also invest, so you can see who else is investing in the business. Once a business is fully funded, a new building appears on the map somewhere, which represents the startup's company. It will have different stats, like burn rate, etc, and will either flop or explode (determined by randomized factors), but they can also raise more rounds, and they can also be bought up, if you're willing to pay a huge premium.

This would be cool, because it adds an aspect of gambling, which exists in real business, especially digital businesses, and it's another needed money sink. You can gamble on businesses, and it pays off, or your startup you put money into can flop.

If the game works in a way where there are different categories, like Social, Video, News, Shopping, etc, then the startup thing would be especially cool, because if you own 50% of the online shopping business, and you're given the opportunity to invest in a shopping related startup, then if you invest in it, and it takes off, you can buy it up and merge it with your existing Shopping business, and boost your domination. Likewise, if a rival owns 100% of Search, and a search startup wants investment, you can gamble on it and hope it somehow starts eating Search % off your rival, and cause them to start having to spend much more money on the business in order to stay on top.

In any event, it would be cool if IT companies/startups are represented by neutral, or owned, special buildings in the DLC :)
I think this will automatically rise up with Digital Age DLC, since you CAN invest in new startup in current game, a new corporations will pop-up when there's an old one go bankrupted or got merged. The trick is to have them constantly show up, like setting many competitors, let AI have very low start-up capitals, and fewer cities for all of them making profiting. And you just invest in whoever show up, and it's a risky businesses for the most part.

However, I do see this can become a mechanism for "background local business", like a first stage for a small company to emerge into a real AI corporation. Combined with different number of AI persons joining or leaving, as well as wider range of starting capitals (like setting a very-high start-up capital for competitors, we can still get from very low to very high start-up any time in the game), it would make the game more dynamic, and probably would work will with Digital Age DLC.
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