Review: Startup Escape

RATING: 4 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 2:52

And that’s how we took our storefront into the forefront of the upfront!

Story

Your team has $1 million. You’ll need to work together to launch your startup before your money runs out! Startup Escape is disrupting the team building market through gamification. Our paradigm-shifting platform leverages the Internet of Things to create into an immersive ecosystem that to allows your team to unlock its full potential.

You’ll have one hour to navigate through a swag-filled, motivational-poster-adorned startup office to “launch” before your faux investment money runs out. You’ll have to complete clues in 5 categories before the time runs out. (Don’t worry, you don’t actually need to know any of these skills!)

With just $1,000,000 in what we believe is angel investment, can you successfully launch your own start-up? It turns out that the investment money is only going to last roughly one hour with the current burn rate, no one said launching a company would be easy.

Whether attending with a real company, or generating a fake one via Startup Escape’s website(including a few absolutely hilarious combinations), this is a story world that reflects the actual businesses around the city. Startups are all too common these days, but are always necessary for innovation. Why not launch a startup escape room?

Scenic

Coming from a humble background, each company starts out where any respectable startup does, the garage. Needless to say this is a tech filled garage, but with just one workstation and not a whole lot going on, once we have secured funding we will need to venture forth in to a real office space. That also means expanding the operation in to a larger venue.

This might actually be the one time where the usual office decor isn’t a negative. For those who have ever worked at a startup or small company, this room has the exact same vibe. But instead of the drop panel ceiling, this is a tech startup, so we get those nice high vaulted ceilings.

A small cluster of desks and workstations are centralized in the main room. Tons of stickers, swag, and tech based toys are scattered around the office. Of course it’s great to have fun whilst at work, why not spend some of that investment capital on office toys?

A reasonably decorated office brings together the whole startup vibe. Buzz words across the walls, motivational posters, and of course, emojis. Since this is San Francisco, it seems all too real.

Puzzles

After jump starting the company from a garage, the puzzles in play take place across five different disciplines. Programming, Design, Dev-ops, Product, and Marketing all come in to play as the pillars of an average tech startup.

Each individual discipline has its own uniquely themed puzzle track, making this an extremely nonlinear experience. But the beauty of it is, having knowledge in any of these fields is not necessary to complete the challenges. Possessing some background knowledge of startup culture or tech life can make certain puzzles humorous, as this game tends to joke around about the San Francisco business vibe.

Focusing more on technology, each puzzle track brings in some unique form of equipment, custom built web pages/computer programs, or tech toys to play with. Nerf dart war at the office? Check. Alexa to help answer questions? Check. A jumbled mess of CAT-5 cables in the server room? Check. VR helmet because why not spend money on it? Check.

All of the puzzles here seamlessly blend in to the storyworld, poking fun at startups and some of the stereotypes that go along with it. Even the hint system is driven by a favorite messenger client for startups, Slack.

Overall

Startup Escape lets would be entrepreneurs experience the complicated and fast-paced work culture that are tech startups. With so many of these types of companies around San Francisco, it’s the perfect market for people to get some of the inside jokes and take a break from a stressful workday.

Even if you don’t work in the tech industry, there’s still plenty of fun to be had here. A well executed but simple story along with a heavily branching puzzle track is built for both larger groups of newer players in a team building event, to smaller groups of enthusiasts looking for a challenge.

We can say that we successfully “launched” our Escape Authority startup here with just enough time and investment money to throw the standard office pizza party afterwards. If only launching a real startup were like this, it would be that much more fun.