The promising inventory management startup with one critical problem:
Zero paying customers.
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Can you build a successful inventory management startup in a competitive market?
Shelfly is an early-stage SaaS startup that helps mid-sized retailers optimize their inventory management. Its flagship product uses real-time alerts to help store managers reduce stockouts, improve ordering accuracy, and respond to demand spikes.
You're part of the founding team: passionate, scrappy, and running lean. You've built an MVP, landed early adopters, and received positive feedback on one killer feature: inventory alerts. But you haven't monetized yet.
You've got three quarters to define your trajectory. Over the next hour, you'll make three pivotal decisions that determine whether Shelfly becomes a market leader… or fades into the startup graveyard.
Each round represents a real-world inflection point—where priorities collide, data is incomplete, and no option is perfect. Your job is to:
Your Round 3 scenario changes based on your previous decisions, creating a truly personalized strategic challenge.
Your Goal: End with strong valuation, growing revenue, satisfied customers, and strategic flexibility. But here's the catch: you can't optimize for everything.
Ready to see if you can build a sustainable, high-growth company in a messy, high-pressure market?
Transform complex data into actionable strategic insights for better business decisions.
Custom simulations and frameworks to improve strategic decision-making capabilities.
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Here's how your strategic decisions shaped your startup's journey
| Round | Your Decision | Revenue Impact | Valuation Impact | Customer Impact | Risk Impact | Flexibility Impact |
|---|
Key Insights to Take Away
Overcommitting to one metric (e.g., growth or valuation) can lead to runway collapse, churn, or inflexibility. The strongest teams typically show moderate to high scores across multiple KPIs, not maxing just one.
A team that goes for traction in Round 1, funds responsibly in Round 2, and plays a stable long game in Round 3 often performs better than a team that chases maximum valuation at every step. It's not just what you choose, it's when and why.
There's no one-size-fits-all answer. A good decision depends on the dashboard data for that round. Ignoring signals (e.g., churn risk, burn rate, investor sentiment) leads to high-risk strategies. Teams that read the market and adapt outperform teams that repeat the same decision logic.
Future flexibility may not win in a single category, but it allows you to adjust in later rounds. Teams that protect flexibility can handle surprises better than those who bet it all early.
There wasn't one winning playbook. Teams that balanced growth with operational discipline, adapted to context, and made coherent decisions across rounds tended to do well. The big lesson: business strategy isn't about maximizing one number, it's about managing competing goals under constraints. That's what Shelfly rewarded.
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We create custom business simulations for leadership teams, workshops, and training programs. Let's discuss how we can build something powerful for your organization.