A board built around bottlenecks
In Settlers of Catan, players build settlements and roads by collecting resources such as wood, brick, wheat, and ore. The board’s hexagonal spaces produce different resources, and dice determine which spaces pay out on a given turn. A player may have plenty of one material and none of another—so progress depends not just on what they own, but on what they can persuade someone else to trade.
That creates a game in which negotiation is part of the basic machinery, not a side activity. Players weigh what a resource is worth to them against what it might help an opponent build. The map also makes location matter: a settlement’s position shapes which resources its owner can receive.
Why the startup analogy landed
For tech investors, those pressures could feel familiar. Startups also work with limited resources, competing plans, and opportunities that depend on getting the right pieces together. In Catan, as in a deal, the useful question is not simply “What do I have?” but “What do I need, who has it, and what can I offer?”
The resemblance is an analogy, not a simulation of venture investing: a board-game trade is simpler and more forgiving than a business decision. But Catan makes bargaining visible and immediate. Every exchange can speed one player’s expansion while giving another a reason to reconsider the deal—turning resource management into a contest over leverage as well as luck.
