Ten teams entered with identical resources, information, and market conditions. Five rounds later, their financial results looked dramatically different. The difference was in the decisions they made along the way.
Not who won or lost — but the decisions that made each team's journey unique.
The clearest evidence the program worked is in the pattern of the results, not in any single number. Three of the ten teams took a real financial setback along the way, corrected, and closed with their strongest round of the simulation. That recover-and-correct pattern is what learning in a safe environment looks like — measured in the numbers rather than asserted.
Cohort profit, all 10 teams combined, by round.
Round 3 net loss, its deepest of the run — forced a $26.19M emergency loan.
Round 5 profit, with the field's best return on equity at 45.5%.
Round 1 net loss, its deepest of the run — stock down to $5.31.
Round 5 profit — its best round of the run.
Round 3 net loss — stock down to $8.66.
Round 5 profit — the strongest of its five rounds.
Stock price reflects perception. Cumulative profit reflects reality.
CapsimCore runs on two technology tiers. The teams didn't just compete — they built distinct competitive structures in each, growing at very different rates.
CapsimCore scores every round in stars — earned by beating your own previous round. Here's how they added up.
Stars are earned round over round: one star for each measure a team improved on versus the previous round — sales, profit, contribution margin, and stock price — plus a fifth star for finishing the round without an emergency loan.
The records these teams set — and a few moments only the data noticed.
The best simulations don't give answers — they surface questions worth wrestling with.
Harper ran the seventh-largest sales base — $64.98M to Digby's $103.74M — and still banked the field's top cumulative profit, $42.80M, on a 46.29% contribution margin against Digby's 32.3%. Digby's capacity is bought and built; Harper's margin is already banked. Over five rounds, margin won. Would ten rounds have paid off Digby's scale — or just widened Harper's lead?
The growth tier expanded to two and a half times its start while Low Tech grew 61.0% — yet the sim's two richest products, Heft (47.9%) and Cake (46.4%), both lived in Low Tech, and the three teams that ran all-High Tech lines finished sixth, seventh, and tenth on cumulative profit. Erie's Edge proved the tier could pay a 46.3% margin. Was High Tech's growth capturable in five rounds, or was the mature tier's margin the smarter buy?
Six of the ten teams posted their biggest profit of the run in Round 5, and the final round redrew the board: Baldwin's stock went from the $1.00 floor to $26.58, Irving's more than doubled to $29.51, Jasper's jumped 71.8%. If those closing results are compounding decisions finally paying out, the standings understate what a longer run would show. Is a five-round score a verdict on the strategies — or a snapshot of trajectories still diverging?
No slide deck created these moments. The teams made real decisions, lived the consequences, and walked away with judgment they'll carry into the business.
