The Law of Games
Foundational postulate
In 30 seconds
Every system defines its own game.
Country · Market · Enterprise
Mechanism
A French €5M round and a US $50M round are not the same game with different chips. Different referees, different win conditions, different ways to die. Same industry label, opposite scoreboards: VC blitzscale vs bootstrapped cash-flow, platform vs services. Misname the game and you run perfect tactics on the wrong board.
Games sit inside systems (Law 1) and get selected from above (Law 6). Capital markets, regulation, talent norms: the referees. French unicorn rhetoric wearing US playbooks is a diagnostic failure — you imported language from a game your capital and labor rules refuse to referee. Name the game before you write the plan.
Signals
- Capital structure and investor expectations reveal the real game.
- Peers in the same industry optimize incompatible metrics (ARR growth vs free cash flow).
- The same role prices differently across games (equity vs cash, speed vs craft).
- Regulation or board resets win conditions mid-strategy.
- Founders speak blitzscale on a cash-flow SME board.
Falsifiers
- Players winning while violating every rule of their apparent game with no systemic cover.
- One universal scoreboard explaining VC, bootstrap, state, and family-capital outcomes alike.
- Identical capital rules producing identical strategies across geographies with no game variance.
Decision implications
- 01 Write win conditions before you write the plan.
- 02 Do not paste US venture playbooks onto French cash-flow games without changing referees and capital.
- 03 Compare only peers on the same scoreboard — industry is not a game.
- 04 Read the term sheet as a game-definition document.
- 05 Re-map the game after regulation, rate, or ownership shocks.
Edge cases
- Hybrid capital (growth equity + family holding) creates dual scoreboards — pick a hierarchy or live in conflict.
- Product-to-marketplace transitions change the game mid-flight; old KPIs become noise.