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Try Failing
Fail a business as someone else before you risk your own
A free browser simulator for anyone thinking about starting a business. You're dealt a random founder (savings, debt, family, city) and run a café, shop or startup for up to 7 years. Every quarter brings a real trade-off: loans, hiring, leases, pivots. Rent, wages, taxes and scams are tuned with public survival statistics. Most runs fail, like in real life. Each ends with a life receipt. Free, no sign-up, 7 languages.
I built Try Failing because I kept asking "should I actually start this?", and every answer I found was either motivation or a spreadsheet.
What it is
You are dealt a random founder: name, age, city, savings, debt, family, credit. You pick a market (Korea, US, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam…) and run a café, shop or startup for up to seven years, a month at a time. Every quarter there is a decision: take the bank loan or the policy loan, hire or do it yourself, renew the lease, pivot, or stop. Then the world answers: rent goes up, the shop next door runs 20% off, a "marketing course" turns out to be a scam, your mental health hits zero before your cash does.
Why it might be useful
- Survival rates, rent, wages, loans and taxes are calibrated per market to public statistics, so the odds feel like the real ones, not a game's.
- It shows you what you do under pressure: do you borrow more, cut staff, or quit? That is the part a business plan cannot tell you.
- Every run ends with a "life receipt": months open, peak debt, worst month, taxes paid, and how you compare with founders dealt the same start.
- Free, no sign-up, works on a phone. 7 languages.
What it is not (honest limits)
- It is not a forecast for your idea. Individual runs are fiction; the model is an abstraction and will be wrong about your street.
- It is not financial, legal or tax advice.
- Most runs end in closure. Some people find that depressing. I find it cheaper than learning it with real savings.
- The decision set is still growing; Korea is the most detailed market right now because that is where our players are.
What I'd love from you
Play one run (about 5-15 minutes), and tell me the moment the simulator felt fake. That is the list I work from.
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About Try Failing on Product Hunt
“Fail a business as someone else before you risk your own”
Try Failing was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 0 upvotes and 1 comments, placing #228 on the daily leaderboard. A free browser simulator for anyone thinking about starting a business. You're dealt a random founder (savings, debt, family, city) and run a café, shop or startup for up to 7 years. Every quarter brings a real trade-off: loans, hiring, leases, pivots. Rent, wages, taxes and scams are tuned with public survival statistics. Most runs fail, like in real life. Each ends with a life receipt. Free, no sign-up, 7 languages.
Try Failing was featured in Indie Games (7.3k followers), Simulation Games (2.6k followers) and Education (79.5k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 42.3k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Try Failing?
Try Failing was hunted by kinoflare. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
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kinoflare
Hi Product Hunt 👋
I built Try Failing because I kept asking "should I actually start this?", and every answer I found was either motivation or a spreadsheet.
What it is
You are dealt a random founder: name, age, city, savings, debt, family, credit. You pick a market (Korea, US, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam…) and run a café, shop or startup for up to seven years, a month at a time. Every quarter there is a decision: take the bank loan or the policy loan, hire or do it yourself, renew the lease, pivot, or stop. Then the world answers: rent goes up, the shop next door runs 20% off, a "marketing course" turns out to be a scam, your mental health hits zero before your cash does.
Why it might be useful
- Survival rates, rent, wages, loans and taxes are calibrated per market to public statistics, so the odds feel like the real ones, not a game's.
- It shows you what you do under pressure: do you borrow more, cut staff, or quit? That is the part a business plan cannot tell you.
- Every run ends with a "life receipt": months open, peak debt, worst month, taxes paid, and how you compare with founders dealt the same start.
- Free, no sign-up, works on a phone. 7 languages.
What it is not (honest limits)
- It is not a forecast for your idea. Individual runs are fiction; the model is an abstraction and will be wrong about your street.
- It is not financial, legal or tax advice.
- Most runs end in closure. Some people find that depressing. I find it cheaper than learning it with real savings.
- The decision set is still growing; Korea is the most detailed market right now because that is where our players are.
What I'd love from you
Play one run (about 5-15 minutes), and tell me the moment the simulator felt fake. That is the list I work from.
Thanks for reading, and good luck failing 🙂