tiny business idea

[czurcz]

hi all,
in my real life me and my brother run small family business employing currently 20 people.

in my country (Poland) major value of GDP is made by such or even smaller businesses (i am not sure about exact figures, but i assume it's more than 60-70%).

now, i was wondering if this could be implemented in CapLab. let say you start with just $100k, you are not present at the stock market and you have lots of competitors similar to your profile. you struggle, but if you have smart ideas enough, can predict what, when and where to sell, run your business perfectly, then you can attract investors and go public to the stock market. by having more money to invest, you can grow into worldwide corporation eventually. on the other hand, you could struggle all the time and have the similar problems like me in real life (strong price competition among local businesses, decisions about employing more people, etc.). now you just click, boom! five million dollars spent on new shop. second click, boom! now i just spent 10 million dollars on new factory. i'm not saying i don't like it, it's the natural part of CapLab where you run huge company and i fully understand it, but running small business with extremely low cash would be interesting too.

obviously, this would require diverse start up capital for AIs and much more than just present max 30 of them.

any comments please welcome!

[David]

Firstly, thanks for sharing your experience in the real business world with us.

What you said sounds like the idea of a business survival game. I think it is an interesting concept to explore more, especially there are now so many types of survival games on the market and it might be possible to introduce such a "business survival game" to the market too.

On a related note, the City Simulation expansion pack that we have been developing uses a modified simulated model of CapLab. The population of a city is much smaller and the setup and operating costs of firms have been adjusted lower in order to cope with the smaller population. There is also a new retail store type called "Grocery Store", sort of a pa-and-ma shop which could be set up with a very small investment.

The reason for the aforementioned changes is a more detailed simulation of various components of the economy, which requires using a different set of simulation algorithms that work better with a smaller population.

So if any of you guys have ideas of linking all these together for a different kind of gameplay (like a business survival game concept mentioned above), feel free to suggest.

[counting]

One most important part for small business is the mechanism of renting, instead of purchasing a whole building with land included. This is how real life small corner store being able to start with very low starting cash.

Also borrow from "private banking" (loan sharks) without assets or collateral that has higher than normal interesting rate might be an interesting mechanism to be added, if we finally have a working financial system in place.

[czurcz]

On a related note, the City Simulation expansion pack that we have been developing uses a modified simulated model of CapLab. The population of a city is much smaller and the setup and operating costs of firms have been adjusted lower in order to cope with the smaller population. There is also a new retail store type called "Grocery Store", sort of a pa-and-ma shop which could be set up with a very small investment.

The reason for the aforementioned changes is a more detailed simulation of various components of the economy, which requires using a different set of simulation algorithms that work better with a smaller population.

this is great! i am following all the latest news about expansion pack, but didn't see the idea about lower operating costs and pa-and-ma shop. thanks for the comment, David!