Business Simulators

Don’t just study a business. Run one.

14 businesses, one rule: take over, make one decision a month, and live with honest consequences. Every run draws a different year — different situations, different numbers — but there are no dice in the outcomes: every ending traces back to your choices.

• Run the Shop — Take over a corner coffee shop for a year — price with a spine, survive a rival, and learn why profitable shops still run out of cash.
• Curb Appeal — One truck, one griddle, a whole city of corners — chase the foot traffic, survive the breakdowns, and learn that location is a pricing decision.
• The Green Season — Eight fat months, four starving ones — build routes, price contracts against one-off jobs, and make summer money survive the winter.
• Quarters — The internet says vending is passive income. The machines have other plans — buy locations, fight spoilage, and learn what "passive" actually costs.
• The Brand — Your product sells. Your ads used to work. Your cash is a warehouse full of inventory — master the cycle that makes profitable stores go broke.
• Billable — Sell hours, buy people, pray the whale client renews — run an agency where utilization is oxygen and concentration is the quiet killer.
• The Studio — Memberships compound — and quietly cancel. Ride the January wave, fight churn you cannot see, and learn why retention beats acquisition.
• The Shore House — A short-term rental with a mortgage, a season, and a city council — price the calendar, survive the reviews, and respect the regulator.
• Default Alive — A tiny SaaS with real users and eleven months of runway — grow monthly revenue faster than you burn, or learn what the runway number was counting down to.
• Rate Card — You are the product, the salesperson, and the entire delivery team — price your hours, guard your calendar, and find out what a full week actually costs you.
• Open to Buy — A main-street shop where every dollar sits on a shelf — buy the season, mark it down on time, and learn why turns matter more than margin.
• The Cash Machine — You bought it with the bank’s money and the seller’s note — now the debt is due monthly whether the dryers run or not. Leverage cuts both ways.
• Prime Cost — Food plus labor is the whole game — engineer a menu, seat the room twice a night, and learn the two percentages that decide whether a full restaurant makes money.
• Change Order — Fixed-price bids, floating costs, and money you have earned but cannot spend — bid the job, hold the scope, and survive the gap between doing work and getting paid.