Your first Company

In this lesson you start a Company, learn what each part of the board shows, and earn your first Cash. You need about ten minutes. You do not build anything yet.

Start the Company#

1. Open Quorum. A badge reader shows on the screen.

2. Click the Founder badge to clock in. The main menu opens.

3. Select Start a company.

The board opens in the Garage, the first Era. The game shows only a few controls now. Other controls appear one at a time, when they become useful.

Read the board#

The board holds four Nodes, joined by Links. Requests move along the Links from left to right.

• Users is where traffic starts. Its card shows your user count, your Apdex, and the requests per second that users send.

• App Server is your only box. It runs PHP under Apache, and the PostgreSQL database runs on the same box. It is a small, cheap Burstable machine.

• Analytics samples the App Server's traffic and turns it into Insight.

• Payments holds the revenue that your users pay.

Select the App Server. The Inspector opens on the right. Read the Load row: it shows how much of the box's capacity is in use. Find the Resources section. It shows the CPU, RAM, and CPU credits gauges. Press Esc to close the Inspector.

In the Garage, users send two request kinds: page views and API reads.

Read the HUD#

The HUD is the panel at the top left. At the start it shows four rows:

• Cash: the money you can spend, and your net income per second.

• Users: your user count, and a ▲ or ▼ for the recent trend.

• Apdex: how satisfied your users are, from 0 to 1, next to the Era's target.

• Latency: the mean time to answer a request.

The top row shows the Era's name and the calendar time. One second of game time is one minute on the calendar. The bar under it fills as your users approach the next funding round.

Your Company starts with 150 users and $300. Users grow while Apdex stays at or above the target, and they leave when it falls below. For the reason, see Apdex and revenue.

Collect your revenue#

Revenue does not go to Cash by itself. It waits in the Payments drawer.

1. Wait about thirty seconds. Watch the Payments card. Its Drawer row fills.

2. Find the button at the bottom of the Payments card. It reads Collect and an amount.

3. Click Collect. A toast confirms the amount, and the Cash row on the HUD rises.

You can also press C anywhere on the board to collect.

The drawer holds about a minute of revenue. When it is full, new revenue spills and is lost, and the game warns you. Collect at least once a minute while you play.

Control the clock#

• Press Space to pause and resume.

• Press S to change the speed. Each press moves to the next speed.

Pause when you want to read the board. Nothing changes while the clock stops.

Watch your users grow#

1. Set the speed to a faster step.

2. Collect when the drawer fills.

3. Watch the Users row. The number climbs.

4. Watch the App Server's Load row. It climbs with your users.

As load grows, the box gets closer to a limit. Its row turns amber at 70% and red at 90%. Soon one of its resources runs out. The next lesson shows you how to find and fix that limit.

Know the goal#

The Garage ends at 1,000 users. When you reach it, a button for the Pre-seed offer appears under the Era name on the HUD. You raise that round in Your first incident.

Press H at any time to open How to play. It lists the keys and the six core actions.

What you learned#

• The board shows your Design: Users, the App Server, Analytics, and Payments.

• The HUD shows Cash, Users, Apdex, and Latency.

• Revenue waits in Payments until you collect it.

• Users grow while Apdex meets the Era's target.

Next: Your first bottleneck.