A pitch-and-close card game about startup capital, for ages 8–16 · 2–4 players · 30 minutes
Every founder is rich in the wrong currency at some point. RUNWAY makes that lesson a game: pitch
the right kind of capital, ride a deal you cannot win, or lock a sector before the market cools.
54cards
4capital kinds
4board sectors
30min play
What players do
Pitch one Capital card to compete for a Deal in its matching sector.
Close: the biggest matching number wins the Deal's Reputation.
Scale: winner refills their hand, claims a Foothold, and the next Deal flips.
What it teaches
Capital has kinds — cash, network, tech, talent — and fit matters more than size.
Reputation compounds; specializing (locking a sector) trades off against diversifying.
A shared Hype track models market cycles — rewards inflate as the game heats up.
Why it is classroom-ready
Teachable in under a minute; a worked example turn is on the rules page.
Every rule for ties, an empty deck, an empty hand, and a stuck board is written down — no ambiguity for a facilitator to improvise.
Greyscale and colorblind-safe: every card reads by color, line-mark, and printed word.
Home-printable — no app, no proprietary parts, a paper board and household tokens.
Validated
Three manual table walkthroughs against the real deck — a naive "always play the biggest card" strategy was tested and lost.
Scored against a 10-pillar world-class play rubric; every pillar clears the pass floor.