Business school teaches frameworks.
Business runs on judgment.
Vanguard SIM is the practice ground between them. 5 weeks is the recommended length; longer 8- and 14-week formats fit a full semester, and the continuous-operations sims stretch to 16 weeks. Students run a business rather than study one.
The moment
Every capstone course this fall is confronting the same question.
What does an exam actually measure now that a language model can pass it? At one Ivy League school this spring, take-home midterm averages jumped from a historical 65 to 85 percent range to 98 percent. Forty of eighty-six students scored 100. Analysis showed clear AI use.
Traditional exams have always measured familiarity with a framework. Business has always rewarded the judgment to use one. Vanguard SIM is a simulation platform sized to your course. 5 weeks is the recommended length; 8- and 14-week options fit a full semester, and the continuous-operations sims stretch to 16 weeks. Teams run real businesses under real constraints, and their grade reflects the decisions they made, not their ability to describe someone else's.
Who built this
Jeff Forgrave
Founder · Practitioner · Faculty at Marian University
Jeff spent 16 years in corporate roles and then started eight companies of his own. He built one, a direct-to-consumer brand, from a napkin sketch to an 8-figure run rate and exited five years in. Along the way he shipped more than 100 consumer products, generated tens of millions in retail sales, and was named on six patents.
After the exit he funded entrepreneurship programs at several universities as a way of giving back. It didn't take long to realize the money wasn't reaching the deeper problem. So he joined the faculty at Marian University, 15 minutes from his house, and started teaching. The gap he found in the classroom is the gap Vanguard SIM exists to close: a working simulation platform where students run a business rather than study one.
“Business school teaches the theory. Companies teach execution. Between them sits a gap I spent twenty years living on one side and four years watching from the other. Vanguard SIM is what I built when I couldn't find the bridge.”
Focused simulations
Nine of them, one competency each.
Discipline-specific simulations for courses that don't need the full C-suite scope. Five are batched-round classics (Innovation Lab, Strategy Arena, Startup Forge, Leadership Crucible, Brand Architects); four run as continuous in-tray operations (The Operator, The CFO Chair, Deal Room, The Closing Cycle). Same platform, same rigor, priced for individual course adoption.
$20 / student · $10 for Founding Faculty, locked 2 years
Innovation Lab
Creativity & Change
Lead your organization through 5 years of disruption, creative problem-solving, and transformative change. Make strategic decisions, adapt to unexpected events, and build a culture of innovation.
Strategy Arena
Strategy & Competitive Advantage
Compete head-to-head against every other team in a shared five-segment market. Set pricing, R&D, marketing, and capacity each round; a deterministic engine reconciles the cohort's decisions and publishes standings, followed by a Boardroom Q&A.
Startup Forge
Entrepreneurship & Startup
Build a startup from idea to Series A pitch across five founder stages. Talk to AI customers, ship a deliverable each stage, manage runway, and pitch a 3-investor LLM panel — with Death March waiting if the cash runs out.
Leadership Crucible
Leadership & Organizational Behavior
Take the helm of an organization mid-transition and lead it through 5 high-stakes years. Make people-and-culture decisions, absorb crisis events that escalate when handled poorly, and adapt after each shock hits.
Brand Architects
Marketing & Brand Management
Steward an established brand across quarterly campaign cycles (5 in the five-week format, 8 in the eight-week / semester format). Write concepts, pre-test them with an LLM Focus Group, allocate spend across 6 channels, then face a 4-persona Creative Panel — with a live Crisis Desk and cultural calendar in between.
The Operator
General Management & Continuous Operations
Run a company day by day. Respond to a steady flow of in-tray events — customer complaints, employee resignations, supplier issues, board nudges — and keep the whole thing healthy.
The CFO Chair
Corporate Finance / CFO Operations
Sit in the CFO seat. Daily in-tray of covenant calls, audit findings, M&A inbound, tax positions — keep cash disciplined, audit trust intact, and capital allocated well.
Deal Room
M&A / Investment Deals
Run a fund. Every active day brings an in-tray of deal events — sourcing pitches, diligence findings, valuation calls, negotiations, close mechanics, integration challenges. Choose or write; an LLM senior partner grades the reasoning.
The Closing Cycle
Accounting & Monthly Close
Run a close team. Every active day brings an in-tray of close events — accruals, reconciliations, adjustments, review, reporting, audit questions, process breaks — under audit-level scrutiny. Choose or write; an LLM senior controller grades the reasoning.
Innovation Lab & Leadership Crucible · Spring 2026 pilots
What they said afterward
Illustrative composites drawn from pilot debriefs, attributed by role and simulation. Full names and institutions land as Founding Faculty complete their spring 2027 semesters.
“Leadership Crucible gave our lectures a live case to land on. A leaked memo, an acquisition offer, two managers at war: each week students had to use the ideas, not just recall them.”
“Right after we set our strategy, a competitor slashed prices and went after our biggest accounts. Having to adjust on the fly taught me more than the planning did.”
“Two of our managers were at war and their teams were picking sides. We had to decide who to back and explain why, which is a lot harder than it sounds in class.”
“The AI Critic pointed out an assumption we didn't know we'd made. Fixing it the next week is when the strategy material clicked for me.”
Straightforward
Pricing
Per student, per semester. No platform fee, no per-section charge, no seat minimums. Institutional invoicing available.
For any professor, any semester, going forward.
- Full platform + instructor dashboard
- Grading rubrics + facilitation guides
- Same-day support during your active semester
- The other 9 simulations at $20/student
37 spots remaining. Closes Dec 15.
- $25 for The Boardroom, $10 for the other 9
- Founding price locked for 2 years (through fall 2028)
- Direct line to the founder + weekly check-ins
- Public Founding Faculty listing
5–8 institutions by invitation.
- Full access, unlimited faculty at your institution
- Case study collaboration
- Faculty references + partnership announcement
- Contact for consideration
The accessibility promise
Price should never be the reason a program that needs this can't teach with it. If your institution can't fit standard pricing into the semester budget, email me directly at jeff@vanguardsim.com. We'll find a way.
Jeff
LMS integration
Works with your LMS.
Vanguard SIM installs into Canvas via LTI 1.3, with the same protocol supporting Blackboard, Brightspace, and Moodle. Your LMS admin installs Vanguard SIM once at the institution level; faculty add it to individual courses from there.
Students launch from your LMS with single sign-on. When you're ready to grade, click Publish to Canvas in the Vanguard SIM gradebook and per-student scores land in your gradebook with the breakdown as the comment.
Setup takes about five minutes on the LMS side; no involvement from IT in most cases. For institutional review or a walkthrough call, email jeff@vanguardsim.com.
- Step 01
Install once
LMS admin pastes our config URL into Canvas Developer Keys. About five minutes.
- Step 02
Students launch from your LMS
One click from the assignment. Single sign-on, no separate password to reset.
- Step 03
Publish grades
One button in the Vanguard SIM gradebook posts every score to your LMS with the breakdown as the comment.
Be one of the first fifty.
The Founding Faculty cohort is the group whose feedback shapes the platform and whose names lend it credibility. In return you get founder access, your founding price locked for two years, and the seat at the table that comes with being early.