You start with just about nothing, earn money daily by performing different kind of jobs. However in order to make some real money you need to create different kind of industries and sell their resources. Keep a close monitor on your warehouse, you wouldn't like it to overflow. Research and upgrade your industries in order to fry them big fishes.
And the best part of all, you don't need to wait forever to build stuff. None of that one week waiting bullschnoodle.
Just take a cup of coffee and give the game a go.
Also dragons, not in the game. But still... dragons