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.
Accelerate Your Startups
Improve the value you deliver to your start-ups and get your start-ups investor-ready in just hours, by gamifying entrepreneurship.
A balancing act
To win, you will need to be the first company to build an investor portfolio of 50 million and get across the finish line. However, that’s easier said than done.
You will need to collect investors along the way, match it with your company strategy, make difficult strategic choices, deal with a number of unforeseen circumstances, all without going bankrupt in your first round.
Develop better growth strategies
As you play, you will go through the different life-stages of a startup, and if you started out without a clear strategy, everything will soon come toppling down on you.
You’ll get valuable insights on how to successfully find and select the right investors, equip yourself with the skills and team you need to accelerate your growth.
Take home real world lessons
Scale Up! The Entrepreneurship Simulator was built based on our work with hundreds of startups and scale-ups around the world and the typical issues they all face.
All the cases and cards featured in Scale Up! are based on real-life cases and real-world investors, which gives you a realistic view on the art and science of scaling better companies.
Available Online…
Scale Up! Digital is a complete and powerful entrepreneurship program. Delivered 100% remotely and digitally. The program covers all aspects of scaling up, investor readiness, and startup strategy. Currently used by accelerators, business schools, and VC funds – 100% digital.
…Or In Person
Scale Up! Digital is a complete and powerful entrepreneurship program. Delivered 100% remotely and digitally. The program covers all aspects of scaling up, investor readiness, and startup strategy. Currently used by accelerators, business schools, and VC funds – 100% digital.
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, World Famous Advisors. You will develop strategies, funding structures, business models, 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.
Work strategically, deal with investors best possible, structure great investment deals, handle startup challenges and work hard and fast to raise your 50M syndicate.
Good luck!
How to Win
The first team to raise a 50M, 100M or 300M syndicate is the winner…Or maybe it is the first to exit at Unicorn valuation? Depending on the level of the group, various ‘winner’ terms can be set. Regardless, all winning teams need to master strategy, cap table math and collaboration.
SCALE STRATEGICALLY
Deal with Challenges
UNDERSTAND INVESTORS
Crack Cap Table Math
DIGITAL SKILLS
Improve Digital Navigation Skills
Company Cards
Cleantech, seafood, tourism, software, digital health?
Select the industry and startup ecosystem most suitable to your participants. The Company Cards define the starting points for all teams.
Modeled After Real-life Startup Challenges
The fundamental principles of Scale Up! is built on real-world experiences and insights. Behind every single card there is a personal story. These stories are either seen first-hand, or witnessed in close proximity to founders, investors and startup ecosystems.
90% of the investor cards are built on actual, real-life investors. More importantly, the deeper complexities and challenges are based on hundreds of investor meetings, fund raising projects and work across the entire ecosystem.
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.
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 crisis and all the factors a startup team has to deal with as it tries to get to a successful exit.
Outcomes
Scale Up! delivers proven learning outcomes.
Understand the full journey from ‘idea to exit’
Understand how to think strategically for a startup
Learn how to deal with early-stage and growth investors
Learn how to think in terms of ‘value creation’
Practice your deal making skills, closely aligned to real-life fund raising
Master new tools for real life scale up success
Scaling-up, Investor Readiness, and Startup Strategy
Having founded, co-founded, invested in, supported, or mentored more than 100 startups, we often find that most teams have zero idea on how to think about investors, how to build a funding strategy, or how to think about their long-term value development.
Scale Up Map
The Scale-Up Map helps startups to look beyond the now and build a short-, medium- and long-term growth strategy on a single page.
Investor Map
This is the investor segmentation tool that helps startups segment their investor prospects and select the right investor based on financial and strategic fit.
Long-term Funding Roadmap
The canvas helps startups develop a long-term capital strategy and help them identify ways in which they can secure long-term growth capital.
Unique and Powerful…
I’ve been living and teaching entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley my whole life. 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. It emulates real life lessons better than any classroom lecture ever can. I’m integrating simulations from Strategy Tools into my coursework at every opportunity.
Rick Rasmussen
Industry Fellow, Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, UC Berkeley
Investor Development
The challenges for startups and scale-ups are many, but in our experience “Investor Development” might be the toughest.
Give start-ups the skills that matter
Help your start-ups build capabilities and growth strategies that will make them successful.
Move beyond “product-market fit”
Use new strategy tools like the Scale Up Map to help them move beyond the lean start-up mindset.
Secure the right investors
Help them build capital strategies and funding roadmaps that will secure the right investors for them.
How FH Vorarlberg Explored Experiential Learning
– 100% Digital
“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
Or Talk to Our Certified Global Experts
Find a certified strategy simulation facilitator who can deliver a simulation session for your students.
Christian Rangen
Norway
Scale Up! Transform! Supercluster!
Rick Rasmussen
USA
Scale Up!
Enrico Maset
Belgium
Scale Up!
Nir Melamud
Israel
Scale Up!
Valuable Training Exercise
This was such a valuable training exercise…should be obligatory in every program. The learning is typically in more detailed handling of investor offers, cap tables, term sheets.
Gro Eirin Dyrnes
Head of Innovation Norway Americas
Want to See It in Action?
Join one of our free 2.5 hours digital discovery sessions and get a taste of the digital Scale Up!