Startup Runway & Recovery Simulator

Startup State

RECOVERING

Cash

$120,000

Runway

6.0 mo

Market Fit

Team Morale

Monthly Burn

$20,000

Month

A promising product failed to find buyers. $120,000 cash left, burning $20,000/mo. Decide how to steer the recovery.

Recovery Levers

Cost-Cutting 30%

Pivot Investment 15%

Team Investment 15%

Sim Speed 1.0×

How it works

Each month the model updates four coupled state variables from three player-controlled levers (0–100%): cost-cutting C, pivot investment P, team investment T.

burn      = baseBurn * (1 - 0.55*C)
spend     = cash * 0.02*(P + T)
revenue   = baseRevenue * (fit/100) * (morale/100)
netFlow   = revenue - burn - spend
cash'     = max(0, cash + netFlow)
fit'      = fit + 0.35*P*rand(0.6,1.3) - 0.6      (drift decay, clamped 0-100)
morale'   = morale + 0.30*T*rand(0.7,1.2) - 1.2*C*0.3 - 1.0   (clamped 0-100)
runway    = cash / burn   (months, if netFlow < 0)

Cutting costs shrinks the burn rate fast but starves morale (layoffs, frozen raises) and gives the pivot no oxygen. Pivot spend nudges market fit up over several noisy months — real product-market fit is never a straight line. Team spend rebuilds morale, which multiplies directly into revenue: a demoralized team executes a good pivot poorly.

Fundraising round — success probability follows a logistic-style blend of the same signals: p = clamp(0.008*fit + 0.006*morale + 0.05*min(runway,10), 0.03, 0.85). A success injects a bridge round scaled to market fit; a failure costs a month of morale (investor rejection is demoralizing) and cannot be retried for 2 months. This mirrors the real dynamic: investors fund traction and a credible team far more than raw enthusiasm, and running out of runway before either recovers is what "failure" means here — cash hits zero.

Month 0

Cash reserve (coin stack) Market fit Team morale

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