Entry timing, commitment, and installed capacity
A market is already running when a new firm has to decide whether to step into it — and that decision isn't just yes or no, it's a question of timing against a moving target. Meanwhile, the incumbents already inside face their own version of the same tension: how much capacity to commit to before knowing whether the demand will be there to use it. Students feel both sides of that trade-off, often in the same session.
The simulation is built so you can teach several different configurations of that tension, without switching tools:
- Sunk vs. flexible capacity. Configure whether installed capacity is a one-way ratchet — once committed, it can never be reduced, only added to — or fully flexible, recoverable at the price it was acquired. The same market can teach very different lessons about commitment depending on which you choose.
- One-shot vs. repeated entry. Decide whether a firm that declines to enter is locked out for good, or free to reconsider in any later round — isolating how much of the "first-mover" story depends on entry actually being irreversible.
- Multi-market competition. Run several markets at once, with the same teams playing an incumbent in one and a prospective entrant in another — so a team defending its position in one market may be the one knocking on the door in the next.
The Capacity Race
Each team runs a GPU compute provider, renting out processing power to AI companies that need it. Every round, incumbent teams decide how many GPU-hours to bring to market; price falls as total supply across every active provider rises. Starting from a configurable round, a new entrant can choose whether to build in and compete too — reshaping the market for everyone already there.
Cost is driven by installed capacity — the hardware a firm has committed to — while price responds to what's actually rented out that round, so a firm can genuinely own more than it's using, exactly like the real over-build risk playing out in this industry today.
