About startupgdp.lol
startupgdp.lol is a world map you can buy. Bid on any country and the top three bidders split that country’s real GDP — 50% to first, 30% to second, 20% to third. Your score is everything you hold added together, and the largest economy is displayed first.
It costs $5 to claim any country and a dollar to pass anyone. That is the whole game.
The interesting decision
Is it better to own Tuvalu outright or come third in Germany? Third in Germany is worth $1.01T; first in Tuvalu is worth $28.67M. But everyone can see Germany, and nobody is fighting you for Tuvalu. Cheap countries claimed early can outscore expensive ones bought late, and finding the country the market has not noticed yet is the actual skill.
Where the numbers come from
GDP is nominal GDP in current US dollars, from the World Bank (indicator NY.GDP.MKTP.CD), taking the most recent year each country has reported. The board covers 216 countries totalling $118.27T, of which 188 are on 2025 figures.
The rest report late — a handful of war-affected countries and small territories are several years behind, and that is genuinely the newest data anyone publishes for them. Taiwan, South Sudan and Eritrea come from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook because the World Bank does not publish them; North Korea, whom neither publishes, uses a Bank of Korea estimate. Every country page states its year and source, and marks estimates as estimates.
Forecasts are never used. The IMF publishes projections years ahead; the data here is capped at the latest year that has actually happened.
A word about fairness
World GDP is brutally top-heavy: the ten largest economies are 66.4% of the planet, and United States alone is 26.0%. Winning the biggest countries genuinely wins the game.
What stops that from being the end of it is that everything costs a dollar to attack and holding it costs more than taking it. An empire bought cheaply is an empire with a lot of borders to defend.
Honest small print
GDP here is a score. It is not money, it is not redeemable, and nothing on this site pays out. Payments are one-time and final except where the rules say otherwise. Outbound links carry nofollow, so buying a country buys you attention, not SEO.
Country names and borders follow ISO 3166-1 and the Natural Earth dataset. They are a mapping convention, not a political position.