Startup Rules

Setup

1. Each player chooses a color and takes the starting deck with a back matching their color. It has ten $0 employees.
2. Give each player $10.
3. Deal three Founder Traits to each player. Each player chooses one and returns the other two to the box.
4. Shuffle the employee deck and reveal seven employees to form the hiring pool.
5. Above the hiring pool, set aside two copies of each C-Suite employee.
6. Shuffle the client deck and reveal clients equal to the number of players plus two.
7. Reveal one Market Trend for the first year.
8. Each player shuffles their deck and draws 5 employees.
9. The last person to go on vacation goes first.

Turns

On your turn, you start with 2 Actions and 1 Hire.

During your turn, you may play employees, place interest, hire employees, close clients, fire employees, and promote employees in any order, as long as you have the resources or effects needed.

Most employees provide resources. Resources are listed below. Actions, Hires, Sales, Promotes, and Fires and Quality reset at the end of every turn. Interest on Clients, Money, Widgets, and Hype persist across turns. Special employee text takes effect after the resources gained from the card.

At the end of your turn, refill the client and hiring pool to the correct number of cards. Discard your hand and all played employees, then draw five new employees from your deck. If your deck runs out, shuffle your discard pile into a new deck and continue drawing.

Resources

Money

Used mainly to hire employees.

Widgets

Products you spend when closing clients.

Interest

Place one of your interest tokens on any client. Your interest belongs to you, not to the client in general. You cannot place more than 1 interest on a single client in one turn.

Sales

Close a client. To close a client, you need the required Sales, the listed Widgets, enough of your own Interest on that client, and more Interest on that client than any other startup. When you close a client, spend the required Sales and Widgets, remove all interest tokens from that client, gain money equal to the client's value and remove the client.

Quality

Each Quality adds +$1 to every client you close that turn.

Hype

Add Hype to the Hype tracker.

Draw

Draw cards from your deck. If you run out of cards in your deck, shuffle your discard pile into your deck. You can only shuffle your discard pile into your deck once before your turn is over.

Action

Play employees from your hand.

Hire

Hire an employee from the hiring pool or C-Suite by paying its salary to the bank. Hired employees go to your discard pile. C-Suite employees are not refilled.

Fire

Trash an employee from your hand or that you have played this turn. Trashed employees are removed from the game.

Promote

Trash the promoted employee, then hire any employee from the hiring pool without paying its salary. The new employee's salary may be lower, equal, or higher, but it cannot be more than $2 higher than the promoted employee's salary.

Value

A few rare cards give additional Value. These cards are worth more when calculating end of game score.

Funding Rounds

The game lasts 16 quarters. A quarter is complete after every player has taken one turn.

1. After quarters 4, 8, 12, and 16, run a funding round.
2. The player with the most hype gains $10. The player with the second-most hype gains $5. In a two player game, the player with the most hype gains $5, and the other player gains $0. Players tied for a position each get that position's reward.
3. Reset every player's Hype to 0.
4. Reveal the new Market Trend for the next year.
5. Discard and refill the seven-card hiring pool. C-Suite employees stay where they are.
6. The first player token moves to the left.

End Of Game

After the fourth funding round, the game ends. Each player adds their money plus the total salary cost of all employees in their deck, hand, and discard pile, plus any additional special value.

The highest value wins.