Entrepreneurship & Innovation · Innovation Management

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.

4 rounds Executive

Preview

About this simulation

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.

Who it is for

An advanced simulation for participants used to working with the main frameworks and trade-offs of the subject, designed for executive education and experienced professionals.

How a session runs

  1. The instructor creates a session from the Eureka dashboard and invites the participants.
  2. Participants play 4 rounds. In each one they submit their decisions and the simulation calculates the results.
  3. The instructor follows each participant's progress and results from the dashboard, and uses the class results for the debrief.

Decisions participants make

The decisions participants make during the simulation:

  • Which venture type does your portfolio thesis lean on to clear BOTH KPIs at once?
  • Where do the survival and follow-on funding KPIs pull in opposite directions?
  • Which observable applicant signal do you trust most to predict the mandated outcomes?
  • How rigorously does your team operationalize the dual mandate before selecting? (%)
  • Fill the 10 cohort seats across venture types (must total 10)
  • How hard do you diversify so one sector's failure cannot sink the whole cohort?
  • How do you allocate the 2.400 mentor-hours and R$1,8M micro-grants across the 10 ventures?
  • Do you fund the R$700 mil fundraising-readiness program (demo days, investor matching, legal clinics)?
  • Mentor-hours steered to the two most fundable ventures to close their rounds (of 2.400)
  • Set the graduation / stage-gate criteria

What participants track

What participants follow on screen as the rounds go by:

  • Survival, Funding & Efficiency Trajectory

Subjects covered

Designed for courses in Innovation Management.

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