Marketplace Simulations: Assessing The Profitability Of Your Business Model

This microsimulation is designed for undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurship and business strategy courses, or any course that covers the topic of new venture development, small businesses start-ups, business plan development, venture feasibility, or business models.
How will your business start-up make money? This interactive exercise answers that question by guiding students through building a business model to quickly and easily evaluate whether a new venture will be profitable.
Developed by Marketplace Simulations and Dr. David Newton - a university professor for 28 years in strategy, finance, and entrepreneurship, now teaching executive development programs worldwide - this microsimulation draws on Dr. Newton's 40 years of consulting for more than 500 early-stage ventures. It engages students through animated lectures, practical challenges, and a compelling storyline. In just 25 minutes, they master the fundamentals of the Margin-Burn-Volume (MBV) model for assessing business viability. Students learn to define and apply the three key MBV inputs: Price, Direct Costs, and Burn (fixed overhead). Through a practical start-up business example, they discover the interaction of profit margins, operational burn rate, and sales volume. They learn how to determine break-even and sustainable profitability. The exercise culminates in a hands-on business challenge, where students analyze and compare two start-up ventures by building MBV models and evaluating which venture is more likely to succeed.
Assessing the Profitability of Your Business Model is part of the Marketplace microsimulations ecosystem. Its concise format, visually- driven presentation, and self-paced structure are ideal for maximizing student engagement and knowledge retention. Each microsimulation is a self-contained, microlearning exercise focused on a single topic. When bundled with other microsimulations, they can be scheduled to align with relevant content as it is introduced throughout the course. Microsimulations can be used in a flipped classroom model as self-study before a class session, or in class to prompt rich discussion.
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