Playdate maker Panic isn't a startup, despite what you might think. The 30-person company has been around for 25 years but is often viewed as a fledgling go-getter that has just burst onto the scene.

During his GDC 2024 talk, Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser dissected the company's origins through the lens of Playdate, and posited that Panic is often billed as a startup because it practices something called "slowbiz."

"Let me explain what that means. We're a different kind of tech company. We're playing the long game. We gradually level up year after year. We never had investors. We never had shareholders. I think when you have shareholders, they're kind of used as a scapegoat for your bad decisions," he says.

"We have no one to scapegoat. Every decision falls on us. We never took any seed money. In the real world of business, this is actually pretty normal—like [if you we…