Inside the Incubator — Cohort Design at Hub Tecnológico Paulista

A four-round, advanced innovation-ecosystem simulation set inside Hub Tecnológico Paulista (HTP), a university-linked technology incubator in São Paulo operating on a R$6,4 milhões annual budget with 14 staff and 1.800 m² of lab and co-working space. After a decade of incubating 96 ventures at a 41% two-year survival rate, HTP's state-agency funding has been renewed for three years contingent on a hard dual mandate: the next cohort must reach a two-year survival rate of at least 60% AND raise at least R$25 milhões in follow-on funding — or HTP loses R$3,5 milhões (55% of its income), halves staff, and closes one cohort track. You are the Managing Director facing 38 qualified applications for 10 seats. Across four rounds you (1) diagnose the portfolio logic — which venture types drive survival versus follow-on funding, and where the two KPIs pull against each other; (2) select the 10-venture cohort from deep-tech swings (~30% survival, huge exit value, slow time-to-revenue), reliable SaaS base hits (~58% survival, small rounds), network-effect marketplaces, and mission-aligned social ventures, balancing variance against the dual mandate; (3) allocate 2.400 mentor-hours and R$1,8 milhões of micro-grants using equal, tiered, or milestone-gated logic and decide whether to fund the R$700 mil fundraising-readiness program out of grants or sponsor money; and (4) set graduation/stage-gate criteria strict enough to protect the survival statistic without graduating zombies or culling the cohort to optics-damaging size, then run a mid-cohort review off-ramping two underperformers and defend the cohort to the agency board. The scoring rewards genuine portfolio thinking — diversified selection that clears both KPIs, concentrated milestone-gated support, calibrated graduation gates, and the discipline to reallocate from failing bets — and punishes the five classic errors: variance overload, single-KPI optimization, the equal-allocation reflex, loose graduation gates that inflate survival with zombies, and loyalty over reallocation. Final KPIs track Survival Rate %, Follow-on Funding (R$M), Resource Efficiency, and budget committed against the R$6,4 milhões cap.