Default Alive

Default Alive is a management sim about building a software company, from one desk in a garage through your Series B. After your seed round, the company runs on a real clock: one real day is three months, whether the app is open or not. You start alone with $120k of savings. You pick a market and name the company, and you set the price as you learn what buyers will pay. The garage runs on its own and stops whenever you have a call to make. Customers write to tell you why they signed, and why they said no or cancelled. You choose what to build from three ideas, and the range on each estimate narrows as you spend time with customers. When investors notice you, you decide how much to raise and whom to meet. Then you compare the term sheets side by side. A lower valuation with clean terms can leave you more money than a higher one, and each sheet shows what you would take home if you sold. Once the seed closes, you move into an office. You book your own week: a sales call, calls with customers, coffee with a candidate, a post, time with the team, or a day off, and each one pays off hours later. Your team posts in the team chat, and they come to you when they need a decision: - Two finalists for a sales job, three stars each. Do you offer market pay, more equity, or a low offer? - The product was down for four hours. Fix the root cause, or patch it and ship? - A clinic group would buy 26 locations after a SOC 2 audit. The audit costs $40k, then $25k a year, and a fifth of your build time for 16 weeks. - Amara asks to talk in your 1:1. Give a raise, or hear them out? - Someone is struggling. Give feedback, start a plan, or let them go? The rest of the team sees how you do it. The board meets every quarter, which is once a real day. The deck shows your ARR, growth, churn, CAC, LTV, burn and runway as each one starts to matter, and it names the causes behind the biggest change. Ines, your advisor from the garage, guards the cash. Your lead investor wants growth. The game runs on a model of how software companies grow. Each ad dollar buys fewer leads than the last. An interview is a rough signal. Funded rivals keep launching in your market, and you draw a living wage from your savings, so a slow garage burns your cash. A run ends when you sell the company or the team, run out of cash, burn out, or your board votes you out. At the Series A bar of $1.2M ARR you raise a Series A, and at the Series B bar of $6M ARR a Series B, and play on toward the Series C bar of $15M ARR. There is no time limit. Every ending gives you a card to share, with your weeks and your revenue curve. You get at most three notifications a day, and none at night. When the cash runs low, the clock stops and waits for you. This version covers the garage, the seed stage, Series A and Series B, up to the Series C bar. It is free, with no ads and no in-app purchases.