One of my favorite hobbies is gaming and one of my favorite games is Hearthstone.
Hearthstone is a digital trading card game set in Blizzard’s World of Warcraft universe. I was big into WoW when I was in high school. I fondly remember raiding Firelands and Dragonsoul with my brother two nights a week for at least 4 hours each night not to mention all the hours we would spend outside of raiding to optimally prepare our characters. His character, Nubrionis, was a druid healer. My character, Aberon, was a hunter who supplied massive quantities of sustained range DPS (Damage Per Second). In one funny anecdote, I remember the day I got into college my Mom went out to get pizza to celebrate. Unfortunately, it was raid night and so my brother and I had to eat our pizza and garlic knots in front of the computer.
As a big WoW fan, I was really excited when Hearthstone was announced. As a kid, I had been really into trading card games like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. To have a digital card game set in one of my favorite fictional worlds seemed like a dream.
I applied to be part of the closed beta for the game and fondly remember getting my access key my sophomore year of college and playing the crap out of Inner Fire Priest.
I’ve played the game on and off ever since. I take breaks and play other games, but I always seem to keep coming back to it. I love the strategy and coming up with new and interesting decks. Recently the game came out with a new “Battlegrounds” game mode which I have been having a lot of fun with,
I take you on this long and winding preamble because I want to talk about two concepts I learned through playing hearthstone and how they apply to startups.
Tempo and Value.
What are Tempo and Value in Hearthstone?
Tempo and Value were not created by Hearthstone. They are critically important aspects of any card game.
Value is generally a bit easier to understand. Value is how much bang for your buck you get with each card. Value is how much “stuff” that card does for you.
Tirion Fordring is a great example of a value card that has been around since the beginnings of the game. Tirion costs 8 mana (max you can have in a game is 10) so it is a big investment to play, but for that cost, Tiron gives you a decent sized 6/6 body that has Divine Shield (absorbs the first damage it takes) and taunt (your opponent must attack Tirion before attacking you or one of your other cards) AND when Tirion dies, you get to equip a 5/3 weapon. A normal 6/6 card with Divine Shield and Taunt would probably cost you about 7 mana. A 5/3 weapon would normally cost you at least 6 mana. So with Tirion you are paying 8 mana for a card that probably gives you at least 13 mana worth of “stuff”. Talk about value. Value is important because each player can only start with 30 cards in their deck. If you run out of value, you almost always lose the game. BUT, the deck that has more value doesn’t always win. That is where tempo comes in.
Tempo is a little bit trickier. The best way to think about tempo is as the momentum of the game. if you have a 4/4 and a 3/2 on your side of the board, and your opponent only has a 3/2, you have the tempo. You have the momentum. Tempo swings are really important in Hearthstone because the player who goes first almost always will begin the game with a slight tempo advantage. Backstab is an example of a tempo card. Backstab doesn’t do that much “stuff”. It does two damage to an undamaged minion for zero mana. For its mana cost, it has decent value, but where Backstab really shines is as a tempo card. Two damage in and of itself isn’t too much to write home about, but because of it’s 0 mana cost, you can play it on the same turn as another card. Let’s say it’s turn three and your opponent has a 3/2 on the board and you don’t have anything. Currently, they have the tempo. On your turn, you play a 3/3 and then backstab your opponents 3/2 which kills it. Now you have a 3/3 and your opponent has nothing on the board. You used backstab to swing the tempo in your favor. Now you have the momentum and the initiative until your opponent wrestles it back. Most games in Hearthstone come down to a constant tug of war between each player fighting for tempo. The further ahead you get on tempo, the harder it is for your opponent to get it back.
Tempo and Value in Startups
I can’t help but relate these concepts to the world of startups. In my experience, startups are all about tempo. That really is the only advantage they have over larger incumbent companies. They can move quicker. They have the momentum and can executive and make adjustments at a speed that would be impossible for a more established company. They thrive on shooting out of the blocks and hoping they can build up enough of an advantage before others can catch up. In two years of being a venture capital investor, if I had to pick just one attribute for a startup, it wouldn’t be a fantastic product or even an experienced team. It would simply be a team that can execute at speed.
Blitzscaling. Move fast and break things. A focus on moving quickly to capture market share. Prioritization of growth over profitability.
All signs of a tempo-focused mindset in startup land.
But there is a danger of being all-in on tempo. In Hearthstone, if you are playing a tempo-oriented deck and your opponent is playing a value-oriented deck, the only way that you can win is by trying to beat your opponent as quickly as possible. Similar to a startup trying to grab market share, if you move too slow and your opponent can hold on long enough to start playing cards like Tirion, your prospects are bleak.
If your deck is too heavily tempo-oriented, your cards may not make enough of an impact over the long-run. You will run out of steam and your opponent will be able to catch up. Even for tempo decks, value is important. As I said earlier, if you run out of value in your deck, you lose.
The story is similar for startups. Yes, tempo is of the utmost concern, but if you don’t have enough value, you are going to fall short of your goals. For startups, value takes the form of unit-economics and a product that customers absolutely love. Get either of these things wrong and you may be tempoing yourself headlong down a bridge to nowhere. Startups thrive based on tempo, but they survive through value. They need to have enough there there that when adversity comes their way the underlying fundamentals are strong enough to weather the storm. They need enough cash and unit economics that are strong enough to be able to sustain them when their tempo lead starts to thin. Value is your margin for error. It is why companies who have found product-market fit can afford to make mistakes. Because when customers are ripping the product out of your hand, you can afford to execute less than perfectly.
The startup life is the tempo life. It’s about moving fast and learning faster. It’s the true competitive differentiator and it is what defines the winners at the end of the day. But startups cannot forget about value. They can’t ignore underlying business quality. They need to be able to have enough value to carry them once their tempo advantage over competitors has run out or if an adverse economic environment strikes.
Tempo. Value.
Who ever said games couldn’t be educational?