What competitive gaming taught me about business

Wait, what?

Yeah, you read this right. COMPETITIVE. GAMING. As Dota. As StarCraft. As Chess.

And you think I am out of my mind - don't you have a startup to run? I am perfectly sane(can't say that I am like Sheldon Cooper - my mom haven't got me checked, but still).

So, if you're not aware there are two types of games in the world: finite games and infinite games. Finite games have the limited set of players, strict rules and clear win condition. Take chess: 2 players only, the rules for the figures, the win condition is to mate the opposite kind. However, chess can be an infinite game too: this game is to play multiple instances of chess game. And boy, this is a completely different game!

Infinite games - as Simon Sinek teaches us - do not impose a limit on the amount of players, there is no clear win condition and the only rule you have is to continue playing.

What the hell does it have to do with business?!

Business as Infinite Game

If you think about business, you will realize: it's an infinite game. Do we have a limit on the number of players? Nope, there is no such limit. Anyone can become a businessman.

Can we define a clear win condition? There were multiple attempt to understand what does it mean to win in business. The stock market will tell you it's capitalization or profit margin or earnings per share(EPS). The CEO might tell you it's annual revenue. The investor conclude it is ROI for their investor round. The CFO will say it's beating a competitor. An old enterpreneur whispers the win is to sell the businesss and retire peacefully. But there is no clear, unified win condition.

People still incept businesses, grow them, gain market share, expand to new countries and eventually go out of business. Remember whale hunting? A dominant industry gone in a year.

So the business is an infinite game by definition. The only rule: continue playing. Our job as entrepreneurs is to run the business until we have resources and the will to play.

Competitive Gaming as Infinite Game

Have you ever played chess? Have you tried to play a video game? Typically, the games come in all sorts and flavours and a major part of it is single player games. Take Contra, or Tetris, or StarCraft, or Age of Empires, or Lines, thousands of them. Those games are finite: it's only you against the computer, you need to beat the game and you win, end of story.

Here's the flip: some of those games have competitive mode. Think chess: there are world-wide championships of this game, and the chess tournaments pay well: The The Chess at Esports World Cup had $1.5 million prize pool. Surprised will you be to learn that at the same tournament people competed in video games too: Dota, StarCraft 2, League Of Legends(LOL), Call of Duty, and many more. The prize pools are impressive as well: StarCraft 2 alone had $700k.

And here's what changes when you stop playing a campaign and start competing with other people: you face a tremendous challenge which transforms your mental model switching thinking from short-term gain into long-term strategy. As it should happen when you have a company to run.

Lesson 1: Fundamentals are everything

I am a fan of StarCraft 2 and actually sit at Top 10% players in the world. It's not much, but I am still better than the vast majority despite having only a handful of hours weekly to enjoy it.

However, you can't just start playing and expect yourself to progress. The game has it's fundamentals: economy, technology and army. In order to win you need to have at least 1 advantage - ideally of course all 3. But building this advantage require appropriate mechanics: building workers with discipline, researching technology and crafting a powerful army finding out what your opponent at the same time to adjust.

It should come to no surprise that failing on fundamentals won't get you anywhere. Without the economy, you won't have resources to build an army, without an army you can't kill your opponent.

The same applies to business: no matter what do you do - ship clothes or sell software - you won't make it without fundaments. And surprisingly the fundamentals are similar: you need discipline to build the product and market it relentlessly; without it you won't have the product to sell and people to buy it; without selling the product you don't have an economy to build your advantage and continue playing - which is the ultimate goal of an infinite game.

So build the fundamentals first. Show up everyday. Have a todo list. Learn appropriate skills. Build on top.

At Supplied we have our fundamentals straight: having solid technology foundation, adapt frugal architecture, move fast, prioritise fiercely, move fast. That's why only this week we signed 5 new clients.

Lesson 2: A lost game is an opportunity to learn

A lost game of chess or SC2 can be infuriating. You're angry at your opponent and yourself, you're disappointed about skill level, or game balance, or match making. At this point you have 3 options.

Option A: blame the world for your loss. Sure, the other race has an advantage. Sure, the ping was bad. Sure, they used some kind of hack. Sure, match making algo sucks.

Option B: Just forget about this one and queue another game. It should not matter if you win the next one, right?

But going with options A and B is fundamentally wrong. First of all, there is no one to blame for the loss aside of you. You're responsible for the result. Yes, the world is unfair place, but it's part of the game. Everything depends on you. Adopt this mentality. Second, you just got some new experience. It would be a waste to merely let it go. That's why you need to always go with Option C.

Option C: learn from your mistakes. SC2 has a powerful option of a replay. Always watch the replay and see what you can do differently next time. Maybe you need to work on mechanics. Maybe the strategy sucks. Maybe you need to scout better. Game of chess got some awesome tools too: for a paid subscription you get a replay analysis. It shows you both great moves as well as mistakes, blunders and suboptimal choices. Study them to advance.

Same applies to business situation. Got downtime? Run incident investigation. Lost a client? Ask why they churned. An engineer left the company? Engage in the exit interview. Learn. Adapt. Grow.

Lesson 3. You're not you when you hungry/tired

I remember this advertisment from Snickers from couple of decades ago - "You are not you when you're hungry".

I am not sure about being hungry, but being tired affects your performance drastically.

Here's how it happens: when I play a game of chess in the evening I frequently lose. Not because I have skilful opponents - but because I make a lot of blunders. I just don't have the focus and the level of attention required. Suddenly I start play relatively well after a good rest.

Here's an example: I recently had a week of pretty bad sleep and I lost a lot of games. However, just after two nights I managed to retain almost 200 points of rating(the world champions are around ~3000 ELO), so you can say how much of an impact your health state has on your performance.

So, get a proper routine. Stay hydrated, get some sun in the morning, Exercise in the morning too, do the focus work in the first half of the day; eat well and get enough sleep. Take vitamins. Care about your body, and your mind will say you thank you.

In the end

So competitive gaming actually has a lot in common with running a company: you compete with infinite set of other players, you want to play as long as you have resources, you need to know your fundamentals, learn from mistakes and take care about yourself.

Talking about the fundamentals: I've got courses on the System Design and Engineering Management. The next cohorts start in January, 2026 - so sign up now while there are still seats left!