The Project Economy — Foundry & Field's Runway Bet

A four-round, intermediate-level venture simulation set inside Foundry & Field Ltd., a 30-month-old Dublin data-and-AI product studio (EUR 2.4M trailing revenue, 14 permanent staff, a rotating freelance bench, EUR 1.3M cash, EUR 145,000 monthly burn — roughly 9 months of runway). On 3 February 2026 a scaling fintech offers the studio its largest contract ever: a EUR 1.2M, 6-month platform build with a fixed, regulation-driven go-live date that requires roughly doubling delivery capacity. Playing the founding team, you decide how to staff one project that will either save the company or sink it — and in doing so you stress-test the asset-light, project-economy thesis: that high-skilled freelancers attached to discrete projects are a driver of venture growth, not a cost of last resort. Round 1 you diagnose the capacity-vs-demand gap and project the do-nothing runway curve, distinguishing durable baseline demand from temporary surge. Round 2 — the core decision — you set the employee-vs-freelance mix across five roles, weighing each against four tests: cost per month, the commitment tail (notice and severance), ramp-up time, and whether the capability is core (own it) or contextual (rent it). Round 3 you operationalise it: capture knowledge so it does not walk out with a contractor, and phase client milestone inflows against monthly payroll so the runway never dips below zero. Round 4 a pipeline shock hits — the EUR 500k Q3 follow-on is delayed indefinitely — and you must flex the mix, convert, or hold, then stake the model on one metric for an investor. The math rewards a modelled blend that owns the core, rents the surge, prices the total cost of employment over the headline rate, phases cash against payroll, and acts on reversibility when the shock lands — and punishes the five classic errors: over-hiring permanent staff and burning the runway under five months, going all-freelance and hollowing out IP-bearing capability, picking the lower hourly rate while ignoring the notice/severance tail, assuming a profitable contract finances itself while milestones lag payroll, and refusing to flex a deliberately flexible workforce. Final KPIs track Runway (months), Delivery Confidence, Project Margin (%), and Model Conviction.