Week 8 Lab: The Round That Keeps Moving

A negotiation roleplay lab — investors keep raising the bar for "enough traction" exactly as founders close in on it, dramatising the moving goalpost

26 April 2027

Groups of four, split into a founder pair and an investor pair. Founders pitch a fictional startup with a stated traction number (“100 paying users”) that the investors have privately agreed, before the roleplay starts, is not actually where the bar will stay.

Before the lab#

Read week 8’s lecture and play with its moving-goalpost widget several times through — notice what it feels like from the visitor’s side before you play the investor’s side of this.

In the lab#

Founders pitch to the number they were told mattered. Investors, in character, express real interest — and then raise the number, the same way the widget’s target jumps on approach. Run this for two or three rounds. Founders: write down the moment you noticed the goal had moved.

Submitting#

A joint writeup: the founders’ account of when they noticed, the investors’ account of why they moved the bar each time, and one paragraph connecting both to why this week’s mechanic couldn’t have been a plain cost-curve. Due Friday 30 April, 5pm.

Groups of four (a founder pair and an investor pair).