FAQ

We are the first-ever startup game for women.

Do you need more details? Ok, here goes:

We are a data-informed serious Role-Playing Game for future female entrepreneurs that is based on our proprietary approach called ”gamepreneurship”.

Even more confused now? Let's fix that.

We use data insights to predict success of users in the game so that we can offer a personalized track for each women and, thus, maximize her success not only in the game but in real life as well.

There's just one tiny problem: there's no data about female entrepreneurs. Yep, you heard us correctly. Despite the fact that 50% of the population are women, there's a huge data gap that doesn't take females into account. We are on a mission to fix this and we need your help. We would absolutely love it for you to join the movement to close the gender data gap. You can do this by simply playing the game, learning how to become an entrepreneur, succeeding in life and being happy.

If you want to learn how to build a startup, but you don't have any funding, technical skills or a necessary network, then you are in the right place. Our community of gamepreneurs with "Mean CEO" as the head will become your most trusted supporters.

Think of Fe/male Switch like a startup simulator where you are learning everything by doing, failing and doing better next time. And you are not alone: you will have other users playing with you, you will have Game Mistresses helping you out every time you have an issue, you will have mentors and experts who will share their knowledge with you. Surrounded by like-minded people and role models that you can relate to, success is only a matter of a few iterations.

We will teach you how to build your audience, how to create a landing page, how to write content, how to build an app without coding and so much more.

Our game includes "how to" educational modules in Skill Lab, practical quests in the game, hands-on coaching, video support from the Mean CEO, access to free software from our partners and a vibrant community of gamepreneurs.

You absolutely need to join our movement, because women must show an active position in building the future that we want. And what do you have to lose? Nothing at all.

We are a bunch of geeks, so here comes a very geeky explanation:

According to a study (“Gender-Based Cerebral Perfusion Differences in 46,034 Functional Neuroimaging Scans", Journal of Alzheimer's Disease), the successful female entrepreneur possesses the traits observed in the male and female brain. The female entrepreneur that enjoys taking risks and competing in a male-dominated world may indicate that the perfusion pattern of her prefrontal cortex may be more consistent with what we observe in the male brain. This allows her to be a courageous, capable leader, while also possessing the ability to foster a strong sense of teamwork given her natural drive towards collaboration. This constant switching from "male" to "female" resources and vice versa heavily relies on executive functioning, aka "internal capacity". In order to be able to switch codes with fewer resources required, one needs to train their brain like they would train a muscle.

That's why we find the name "Fe/male Switch" perfectly fitting for an educational role-playing game that aims to increase the internal capacity of female entrepreneurs.

Nope. The Summer Camp “Code: Orange” for Dutch-oriented future female entrepreneurs was the first-ever pilot to be run, with the second pilot being held in Malta “MPV: Maximum Value Pilot”. The first edition of the Dutch cohort, started in August 2021. The second edition is in July 2022. What happens after is still being decided. Most probably, the platform will be officially launched in the second half of 2022.

In order for you to learn how to build a startup, you need to be a part of building one. From day one, we at Fe/male Switch adopted a "building in public" approach, which means we are sharing the progress every step of the way, the good and the bad. By joining sooner rather than later, you will get instant access to a "startup in the building" and get involved with this game as it develops. Isn't it awesome to be a part of that? You can co-create with us and, eventually, even become a part of our team.

We want to make the best game we can, and even in beta, we’ve learnt that working directly with our community is the best way to do that. Fe/male Switch is a huge startup universe and we have lots that we want to add, and a Pilot is a way for us to receive constant valuable feedback, collaborate with our players on what they want to see, and keep our players in mind at every step of the development cycle.

At least until August 2022, but depending on player feedback and the amount of content we choose to put into the final game, it may take longer.

We currently use our LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram pages as our primary ways to talk to our community, while we are building our own community tool (exciting). Users that take part in our pilots are welcome to suggest new features and modifications. Moreover, you get rewarded for this with in-game tokens that can be exchanged for prizes and cash (that's the play to earn model). Upcoming changes are openly discussed with the community for early feedback. We will continue to develop this process based on the needs and feedback of the community.

Most planned core features of the game have been implemented and we are mostly working on the content. The Pilot lasts 4 weeks and contains at least 10 modules in Skill Lab and more than 10 quests in the Game.

Currently, the game is supported only in English. However, we love foreign languages and are open to the idea of a multilingual community in the future.

Primarily, the game is aimed at teaching females the skills that may appear essential both in entrepreneurship and outside of this sphere. Dealing with external real-life challenges in the game, users are developing their spatial reasoning, critical thinking, networking, and business management skills. They do that while mastering vetted software tools like Integromat, Tilda, Bubble, Adalo, Canva, Miro, etc.
By the end of the pilot, our users will be able to create a landing page, build automations, create a video tutorial with visually appealing content, and much more!

No, we don’t expect this from you. Moreover, ideas are not the most important part of building a startup. We urge you to come up with any idea that looks fun to you and just play around with it. We want you to learn the algorithm of idea validation by going through multiple idea. It's a game, so play a little. And once that "one and only" idea comes to you while you are in the shower, you will have already learned about all the right steps.

The workload is 5+ hours per week. You can do as little or as much as you want on top of that. We have some scheduled activities that are useful to attend (but can be viewed as a recording in case you cannot be there), but most of the things in Skill Lab and the Game can be done any time. It's a nice training for a remote work experience. And at times it will be asynchronous, because of different time zones of all the participants.

We know that building startups is not easy, but it can and should be fun. Once we are out of the pilot stage, gamepreneurs will have a 24/7/365 access to the platform and can spend as much time as they need. Most of our gamepreneurs will be able to start a company in real life within the first 6 months, provided that they come with zero knowledge about building a company. This includes building an audience as well as building a product.

We plan to add more content such as new Skill Lab modules (modules on blockchain are on the to do list already) and Game quests. We also want to introduce challenges (which are problems that real companies want you to solve), hire more Game Mistresses, introduce monetization of UGC (that's content that you as a user create for the platform) . Moreover, there will be no time limit and any user can spend 365 days a year upskilling themselves. Oh yeah, don't forget a larger amount of prizes and a larger funding pool.

Gamepreneurship is our proprietary "learning by playing" methodology. And that’s one of the favourite topics of discussion of our CEO, because she is an experienced educator. In short, our methodology is that we never use one single method, but always blend a combination of the ones that have demonstrated their efficiency. Our users don’t have years to waste on theory that ends up being outdated by the time of implementation. Users come here to get tangible results in days or weeks. Not years. They build a website instead of learning about building a website. They get their first users instead of learning about getting them. They buy their first crypto instead of learning about crypto. They get stuff done instead of learning about 10 best ways to do stuff. That's exactly how startups get built.

Don't worry if you don't know something. As long as you have the desire to acquire new knowledge, we will help you out. Most of our team members started with no knowledge of startups, so from early on, we had to come up with easy ways to get them up to speed. And we succeeded. And now we want to share that knowledge and experience with you.

Joining the pilot is absolutely free. And it's possible to earn some money if you become one of the community-builders. Moreover, the best performers will be rewarded with prizes. And we are planning on micro-financing your first startup steps as well if you are one of the top gamepreneurs.

Maybe you are questioning how this is possible, seeing as someone has to develop the platform, create content and offer support to the users. Well, we believe that pilots should be free because we ask our users to give us feedback in return. We are a registered non profit and we have companies and individuals supporting the diversity in tech.

After the second pilot is over, there will be a fee for getting access to the platform, but we are not going to introduce high fees. There are two main reasons for that:

• The first is our core purpose: providing every future female entrepreneur with the key startup-essential skills to create a resilient and sustainable startup. Social impact is our main mission.
• The second is ‘Gamepreneurship’. Our disruptive multidisciplinary approach allows us to deliver the best educational game at a “no-brainer” price.

YES. We do certify users and give out state-of-art “live certificates” that can update themselves (the feature is currently in development).

Once you complete at least one (1) module, you’ll receive your “Gamepreneur” certificate. It means that your certificate gets created. You get a link that you can share with anyone. You can also add it to your LinkedIn profile.

Once you proceed further, your certificate gets updated and will continue doing so as long as you achieve results. That’s our proprietary “Live Certificates” technology that puts all of your achievements together and lets you control who can access it and for how long.

The certificate includes a lot more information than a regular certificate does (for instance, homework performance). It means, our certification has actual value and “proof of work” that can be verified by anyone who gets access to your credentials. It’s like your portfolio, but an interactive one.

More and more companies are taking a skills-based approach in their hiring. University diplomas are no longer the only thing that matters. If our users get certified, it means they have gone through rigorous training and can do the test task that falls within the scope of the platform, with flying colors. Creating an awesome-looking pitch deck, building a landing page, or even a small web application in a few hours, that’s just a few examples of what our users will be able to do. We even tested it on a potential investor and he was impressed!

Now YES. Eventually, we will have content created for different groups of people, but we are starting with women-specific content and target all our communication towards them. During the first pilots, only women are accepted as we need to do a lot of testing and adjusting. And we want women to feel safe among relatable people around them.

The game is designed for users over the age of 18. Games are NOT only for kids, and most importantly, not just for boys.

You are more than welcome to encourage your female friends to participate in the project and grow together! You can form a team and invite your friend or join one together.

In this case, you can master the digital tools essential for any startup founder (Bubble, Tilda, Figma, etc) and perfect the skills that you already have. Sell your skills and earn tokens so that you can win in the game. You can also play as a mentor or an investor and experience startup life from different angles.

Incubator and accelerator are startup programs with limited duration, a cohort-based program, formal curricula, mentoring, a bundle of networks, and a concluding demo-day or graduation. We do believe that traditional incubators and accelerators are valuable. Particularly, those with connections to investors. However, you can only test one idea per program and you actually already need to have that idea. What if you are just exploring entrepreneurship? What if you want to work in a startup but not as a founder? So many what-ifs that traditional approaches do not take care of. Why does it happen?

• Incubators require a substantial investment of money and time, with uncertain returns.
• Some mentors come from the “traditional business” and lack ‘real startup’ experience and “gender intelligence”.
• Similar content and generic case studies that are “one size fits all”.
• Tedious application processes: whereas with us, you sign up and you start your startup journey right away (once we are out of the piloting stage).

In Fe/male Switch, we believe that getting entrepreneurial skills must be done as early as possible to increase the chances of a “future” startup success. That’s why we have created this ultra-efficient and updatable program, at an affordable price.

Among the vast universe of online courses:

• They are usually focused on one single niche (e.g. entrepreneurs)
• Most of them are not well-structured and learnings are usually poor
• Too often professors are ‘gurus’ who want to sell their story
• They lack a value proposition
• There is zero offline engagement and community

Fe/male Switch offers much more than an online learning experience or a game. Once you become a ‘gamepreneur’ you don’t only have access to an excellent entrepreneurial program, you join a thriving community of people willing to learn and achieve their professional goals.

It is a survival game where you find yourself in the middle of a startup village! The game utilizes a skill-level system that ranges from soft to hard. Each skill can be increased (junior, medium, senior levels), and has different effects on the game mechanics.

A “minimum-rules” environment offers better incentives than a heavily controlled one.
You are dropped into the startup world with some guidance. And when you have figured out what to do (beyond surviving), you have unlimited options to do other things. You can hang out in the office, do quests and challenges, seek investment or choose to bootstrap, you can get interns or poach talent from other teams.

This sense of semi-guided, yet uncertain, freedom might be scary, yet it is very exciting. It’s all about the possibility of meaningfully progressing your startup team in a virtual startup universe. The game aims to deliver profound and memorable experiences. Fe/male Switch is an adventure, a second life, and quickly becomes something of a community-led experience.

It’s all about intrinsic rewards, progress, and delivering a sense of achievement. It's about growing your inner entrepreneur!
The incentive comes from the fact that the core gameplay is intrinsically fun, and you continuously feel that you are progressing your skills organically, as a side effect of pursuing that intrinsic sense of enjoyment. This virtuous cycle of enjoyment and progression makes you want to explore more, win quests and challenges, get a better office, and a greater team.

The best reward is to be recognized and taken seriously as a person and not a set of numbers.
You would even want to do things that you normally wouldn't. For instance, to “give up your salary” — not because you will be kicked out of the team if you don’t or receive a reward if you do, but because you simply get stronger as a team when you have extra resources and take care of your team members. The credibility of a team is a compound index, consisting of individual team member’s experience and skills, gained in Skill Lab.

Endless exciting startup stories are to be created! Join us today!