An entrepreneurship simulation where the company is real
Most classroom business simulations hand students a fictional company and a set of sliders: price, output, marketing spend, a round closes, a ranking comes back. That teaches how the model behaves. It doesn't teach what an entrepreneurship course is about, which is finding a problem real people have and getting them to pay for the answer. Here is the other kind of simulation, where the only simulated parts are the money and the market.
Two kinds of simulation
A decision simulation is good at one thing: showing how choices interact inside a model someone else wrote. Students learn the model, and the best teams are the ones who reverse-engineer it fastest. What they never do is talk to a customer, write a sentence a stranger will read, or watch a price they set meet a person deciding whether to pay it.
In Velofound Classroom each team picks a real problem and builds a real company around it, one module a week. The interviews are with real people, the website is live, and the ad is designed by the team. What's simulated is everything that would make the course unsafe or unfair: the bank balance is course money, ad results are simulated from the creative the team uploads, and the class invests play money in each other's companies.
| Typical decision simulation | Velofound Classroom | |
|---|---|---|
| The company | Fictional, the same for every team | Each team's own, from a problem they found |
| Customers | A demand curve | Two recorded interviews per student, with people they found |
| What students make | Decisions entered into a form | A live website, a competitor map, a prototype, an ad, a budget, a pitch |
| Money | Model output | A Team Bank in course money, checked against real prices |
| How teams are ranked | Model score | Your grade, a work score and the class's votes, in weights you set |
| Your syllabus | Usually bent to fit the simulation | Mapped module by module onto the weeks you already teach |
What one week looks like
The rhythm is the same every week, so the simulation sits beside your lectures instead of replacing them.
Monday, in class
You teach the week's topic the way you always have: pricing, customer discovery, the business model.
Tuesday to Thursday, outside class
Teams apply it to their own company: the module's team hand-in, plus a role piece for each student (CEO, CFO, CMO, COO or CTO), so every person owns a part.
Friday
Hand-ins lock with their sources and a signed note that the decisions and the writing are the team's own. Each student writes a short weekly memo.
Every one, two or three weeks
Earnings calls: each team reports to the class in a few minutes, on the schedule you pick. If the Venture Market is on, prices move on the graded work.
What students have at the end
Things they can show, not things they thought about. Over the nine-week course a team produces a problem brief and market sizing, a business model, recorded customer interviews, an industry and competitor map, a live website and a prototype they demo on a call, a growth plan and an ad, a launch budget and a 12-month P&L with runway, a pricing strategy with unit economics, an operating and funding plan, and an investor presentation on Demo Day. Every piece is graded against a rubric students can read before they start.
The twelve-week version adds a second version of the product, opening for real orders, deeper finance and a rehearsal before Demo Day. The three-week version is a single sprint inside a course you already teach.
The market, if you want one
The Venture Market is optional. When it's on, each student gets $100,000 in play money to invest in classmates' companies, and each company's share price blends three inputs in weights you choose: your grade, Velofound's work score and the class's votes. The default is 50/30/20. Earnings calls can run every week, every two weeks or every three weeks.
Turn it off and teams still build the company and complete every module; you grade in the gradebook and there are no prices, no trading and no leaderboard. You can also start with it off and switch it on once every team has something to pitch.
Where AI fits
As a tutor, not a ghostwriter. Students can ask for help on any question and get prompts, counter-questions and where to look, never the paragraph to paste. The handful of assignments that use AI on purpose say so on the page. Student work is never used to train AI, and Velofound works under a signed data privacy agreement with the school.
Fitting it into your course
Send your syllabus and every week comes back mapped to the closest module, in your order, at your students' level, with exam and guest-speaker weeks left as lecture only. You approve or swap any module. Pricing is per student: $29 for the three-week sprint, $59 for nine weeks, $75 for twelve. Instructor accounts are free. See the formats, modules and levels on Velofound Classroom, or read a week-by-week plan for a hands-on entrepreneurship course.
Common questions
Is this a simulation or a real business?
Both. The company, the customers, the website and the work are real. The money is not: the Team Bank and the Venture Market run on course money, and ads are simulated from the creative students upload, so nobody spends or risks real money.
How long does it take students each week?
You choose. Light is about two hours a week (the team hand-in only), standard about four (plus a role piece per student), and deep about six (plus the weekly memo, earnings calls and the market). You can go light in exam weeks and deep in project weeks.
Does it work for an intro course?
Yes. Courses are pitched at three levels: intro, for a first course in any major, with plain-language prompts and worked examples; intermediate, for upper-level undergraduates; and graduate, for MBA and honors sections, with a tighter rubric and deeper finance.
Do I have to change my syllabus?
No. Your lectures, readings, cases and exams stay as they are. Each week's module applies that week's topic to the team's company, and weeks that don't fit stay lecture only.
What does it cost?
Per student: $29 for a three-week sprint, $59 for the nine-week course, $75 for twelve weeks or for a full semester on the Velofound site itself. Instructor accounts are free. The university can pay one invoice, students can pay by card when they join, or it can be a course materials fee.
Send us your syllabus.
We'll send back your course: every week mapped to a module at your level and length, within seven days. No commitment until you approve it.
See Velofound Classroom →