the entrepreneurship simulator

Scale Up!

Launching a startup is easy. Successfully raising outside capital and scaling? Much, much harder. Designed for accelerators, incubators, startup teams, board members, early-stage investors, and anyone dealing with startups and scale-ups – Scale Up! helps you understand, experience, and overcome the growth challenges startups often face when trying to scale.

how it works

Scale Up! in 30 sec

You are the two co-founders of a startup. Your goal is to build and scale this tiny startup to a successful scale-up. The first team to successfully raise a 50M syndicate investor deal – and make it over the finish line win.

Along the way, you will meet ups (Boom), downs (Bust), investors, Super Angels, and World Famous Advisors. You will develop strategies, funding structures, business models, and pitches, deal with strategic dilemmas, build your investor pitch, master cap table math, deal with exit scenarios, and learn how to develop your long-term capital strategy. You will be competing with (up to) five other teams, all set on finishing ahead of you.

“I’ve never seen a more unique and powerful way to help startups learn how to scale, raise financing and truly understand how to build better companies than the Scale Up! simulation.”

Rick Rasmussen

Industry Fellow, Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, UC Berkeley

canvases

Scale Up! Toolkit

All participants will receive a personal copy of the powerful, visual Startup Toolkit. These visual tools have helped 1000’s of founders develop their growth strategy, raise financing and build amazing companies.

Learn to use the tools. Apply them onto your own, real-life startup.

Content deepdive

What You Will Experience

You and your team will take on the role of a young startup team. You will be challenged to develop a strategy and make strategic decisions under time pressure, notably with regard to investors and investor syndicates.

You will be exposed to strategic dilemmas, hostile competitors, demanding investors, complex deals, liquidity crises, and all the factors a startup team has to deal with as it tries to get to a successful exit.

Many people get overwhelmed. They function poorly as a team. They get stressed. They make bad decisions. They are unable to collaborate on strategy. They are unable to handle tough competitors. They make bad deals. They are unable to handle cap tables.

This is by design.

Companies

Cleantech, seafood, tourism, software, digital health? Select the industry and startup ecosystem most suitable to your participants. 

Challenges

Work on dozens of real-life cases, roadmaps, investor negotiations and much more. Experience real life investor challenges, in the simulation.

Investors

Investor Development might be the toughest challenge for startups and scale-ups. Structure 5-8 funding rounds, just like in real life…

Advisors

Need help to accelerate your startup’s climate impact? Lean on global climate VC expert Don Wood to accelerate your journey to success.

Super Investors

Looking for just the right investor for your startup? Meet 100’s of real life investors, with real life terms and expectations, like Peach and Lightrock.

Ups & Downs

Suffer the downturns and surf the upturns of startup life. Get exposed to 100’s of scenarios and every shade of startup life. All built on real-life events.

“I was rather impressed – as I saw what the students were doing and how they were acting; they were truly immersed and learning. Our students were amazed and it was really valuable to them in terms of learning how to run a startup and scale up.”

Magdalena Meusburger

Director and Co-Founder of startupstube

the team

Key Roles on Your Team

Each team will have 2 to five participants, with three being the target number.

Founder CEO

The CEO is responsible for overall team performance and company development. Needs to handle complexity and be able to ‘see through the fog’.

Founder CSO

The CFO is in charge of all aspects of finance, liquidity, cap table, and investor relations. Will work closely with CEO, but needs to ‘stay on top of cash and financing’

Co-Founder / Board Member

If you are more than two people, you can bring in more co-founders (equity split?) or board members. That’s up to you.

Format

Our Success Stories, Online and In-person

Scale Up! can be used in-person, as well as online. Here are some success stories showcasing our different formats.

Online

How Katapult Accelerator Gets Its Startups Investor-Ready

Learn More >

In-Person

How Founders Intelligence Empowers Their Team & Drives Client Empathy with Scale Up! Strategy Simulation

Learn More >

In-Person

Strategizing for Success: Scale Up! with Entrepreneurs’ Organization UAE

Learn More >

get in touch

Bring Scale Up! to Your Startups

Get in touch with us to learn more and explore how we can work together, whether you’re looking to enhance entrepreneurship skills, foster teamwork, or cultivate strategic thinking.