For your team · Startup Forge

Startup Forge

Entrepreneurship & Startup · Entrepreneurship

Build a startup from idea to Series A — pivots, hires, fundraising, and the death march.

Startup Forge models the 5-stage founder journey: Ideation → Customer Discovery → MVP & Launch → Pivot or Persevere → Scale & Pitch. Each team picks a business type (B2B SaaS, DTC Products, Consumer Mobile, Marketplace, or AI Product) and runs a real founder loop — interview LLM personas, build a written deliverable per stage, get LLM Critic feedback, hire (each hire bumps burn and dilutes the cap table), raise funding rounds (which dilute holders further), and at Stage 5 pitch to a 3-investor LLM panel (Lead / Junior Analyst / Operating) for a term-sheet, send-a-memo, or pass verdict. A persistent runway clock ticks across the whole sim; when cash hits zero, Death March mode kicks in: the Critic rubric gets stricter, market signals get harsher, and three rescue options unlock — bridge round (heavy dilution), hard pivot (founder savings), or fire-sale acquihire (game over).

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Learning objectives

  • Move through the founder loop iteratively — customer evidence drives product decisions, not the other way around.
  • Make hiring + spending decisions under runway constraint (the hardest tradeoff founders face).
  • Write venture-grade artifacts (problem brief, MVP spec, pitch deck) and defend them against pushback.
  • Pivot when evidence demands it — and know the difference between a pivot and a panic.
  • Pitch persuasively to a skeptical investor panel.

The loop

  1. 1
    Stage opens
    New stage = new deliverable to produce (problem brief, MVP spec, pitch deck).
  2. 2
    Interviews
    LLM personas you can chat with — customers, advisors, early users. Save quotes for evidence.
  3. 3
    Build the deliverable
    Team writes the actual artifact in-app. The Critic LLM grades it against a rubric.
  4. 4
    Hire / spend
    Choose who to bring on. Each hire burns cash but unlocks capacity.
  5. 5
    Market signals
    External shocks (competitor raises, key user churns, regulatory letter) hit the runway.
  6. 6
    Stage close
    Critic grades the deliverable. Cash flow updates. Sometimes funding raises. Sometimes Death March.
  7. 7
    Pitch (Stage 5)
    Final stage: pitch to a 3-investor LLM panel for Series A. They argue with each other.

Pillars & scoring

Every team is scored on four pillars that compound across the sim. They aggregate into a composite the leaderboard ranks by, and the professor can see per-pillar deltas in the gradebook.

Product Innovation

How clearly the team is solving a real problem with a non-obvious approach.

Pivot Speed

How quickly the team turns customer evidence into product changes.

Investor Confidence

Whether the VC panel and advisors believe in this team.

Runway

How much cash is left and how long it lasts.

Hero features

  • LLM Persona Chat

    Real conversations with customer personas — they argue back, have specific opinions, won't give pat answers. Students save quotes as evidence.

  • LLM Critic

    Grades every deliverable against a rubric. Gets stricter in Death March. Writes substantive feedback, not a grade.

  • Investor Panel (Stage 5)

    A 3-LLM panel debates the team's pitch with each other — different investor archetypes, different concerns.

  • Death March mode

    When cash gets low, the sim shifts: stricter Critic, harsher market signals, rescue options unlock. Models real founder pressure.

  • 5 business types

    B2B SaaS, DTC Products (Shark Tank), Consumer Mobile, Marketplace, AI Product — same engine, very different worlds.

Fit & format

Pacing

5-week intensive (one stage per week) · 8-week standard · 14-week semester.

Cohort shape

Designed for ~15-30 students in teams of 4-5. Each team picks its business type.

Best for

MBA entrepreneurship, undergraduate startup courses, executive education in venture/early-stage.

Differentiator

The only sim where teams chat with AI personas and pitch to a panel. Death March is also unique — most students run out of cash before the end.

Sample discussion prompt

One of many pre-authored prompts from the sim’s Stage 1 closelibrary. Grounded in the team’s actual decisions and used as a scheduled teaching moment.

Stage 1 close

Problem or solution?

Read your team's Stage 1 problem brief aloud. Is the first paragraph about the customer's problem or about your solution? What did the Critic say about the distinction? Which team's brief made you want to build the thing they're building?

LMS

Canvas, Blackboard, Brightspace, Moodle via LTI 1.3. Students launch from your LMS with single sign-on; one-click grade publish posts scores back with the rubric breakdown as the comment.

Pricing
$20 / student
$10 / student for Founding Faculty, locked 2 years

Per semester. No platform fee, no per-section charge, no seat minimums. Institutional invoicing available.

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