The Turn
Raising the stakes
A potential acquirer calls with an offer that would save everyone's jobs but kill the vision. Meanwhile, your lead engineer's LinkedIn just went active.
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Part of this story
The Runway Clock
→Three months of money left and the fundraise is not going well. Make impossible decisions about what to cut and what to protect.
Part of the quest
Startup Survival
→The glamour of entrepreneurship meets the reality of runway, rejection, and ramen. Navigate the emotional and strategic challenges of building something from nothing. You'll navigate four escalating scenarios — from the pivot moment to the first customer — practicing the decisions that matter most when the pressure is real and the stakes are personal. This isn't theory. It's practice for the moments that define how this chapter of your life unfolds.
What you'll learn from The Turn
This scenario focuses on Raising the stakes — a critical skill inside the broader career domain. You'll face a decision where the instinctive response is often the wrong one. After you make your choice, you'll see exactly what happened in the other person's head and why it mattered. The scenario is part of The Runway Clock, a full interactive story inside the Startup Survival quest.
Skills you'll build in Startup Survival
More scenarios in this quest
You open the banking app and the number stares back — three months of runway, maybe less. The fundraise pipeline is a graveyard of polite rejections and ghosted follow-ups.
The first cut list lands on your desk — names of people who trusted you enough to join early. Every line item is a person, a family, a promise you made.
The clock is ticking and the options are brutal. You gather the team for the hardest all-hands you have ever led — honesty or hope, and you are not sure you can deliver both.
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