New upgraded AI start-up simulation launched for students worldwide

Warwick Business School Professor Ammon Salter has unveiled a major upgrade to The Slingshot, a free open-source simulation that allows students to build and run virtual AI start-ups in a risk-free environment.

The launch comes as the UK AI sector generates £23.9 billion in revenue and supports an estimated 6,000 companies, with employers increasingly seeking graduates who understand the realities of building AI ventures.

Since January 2026, more than 2,200 people across 63 countries have used The Slingshot, which has been adopted in at least 15 university classrooms worldwide. The simulation is part of Professor Salter's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Playbook, a suite of educational games he developed, that are now being used in 77 countries.

Designed as a browser-based entrepreneurship simulation, The Slingshot compresses the experience of creating a venture into a 25 to 40-minute game. Players navigate 16 quarters of decision-making across 12 sectors, from healthcare and creative industries to on-device AI, sports and wellbeing.

New AI tools bring venture building to life 

The new version introduces Ada, an AI-powered venture builder that helps players develop business ideas and navigate key start-up decisions. The game also features Schumpeter, an end-of-game reflection tool that provides an analytical debrief to ensure gameplay translates into clear outcomes.

Built on Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded research into UK-based AI start-ups and their engagement with the research base, and conducted with Stefano Baruffaldi, of Politecnico di Milano, and Federico Bignone of WBS, the simulation challenges players to make critical choices.

Players must navigate more than 590 events drawn from real start-up experiences, racing competitors to milestones before capital or time runs out.

Professor Salter, Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at Warwick Business School, said: 

"AI may be the defining technology of our era, but it does not apply itself. The value lies in identifying and seizing opportunities. We used our research on how UK start-ups form, grow and engage the science base to confront students with the same decisions that founders face, building their confidence to take the plunge themselves."

Supporting entrepreneurship education worldwide

For educators at leading business schools and higher education institutions globally, The Slingshot offers a practical solution to teaching tech entrepreneurship. Students don't just read about startup challenges, they live them, and fail safely. When integrated with briefings, theory, and cases on courses, it can provide a way to enrich and enliven the learning experience.

Hana Milanov, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, IMD Business School, (on leave of absence from TU Munich) has used The Slingshot in her classrooms. She said:

"As an entrepreneurial university, TUM has long championed experiential and creative approaches to entrepreneurship education. The Slingshot offered my Master's and Executive MBA students a compelling way to experience uncertainty, resource constraints, failure, adaptation, and venture-building decisions in practice; while giving instructors a rich platform for discussion and reflection on the entire venture-building cycle, something otherwise difficult to achieve.

"Its value lies not only in the simulation itself, but in the wider community of educators using it to advance more reflective, evidence-based, and impactful entrepreneurship teaching.”

Running entirely in the browser with no user accounts, downloads, or software installation required, a full game session of The Slingshot fits comfortably within a standard seminar or interactive workshop. Built as a non-profit community project, The Slingshot gives higher-education institutions free access to a sophisticated simulation engine that would traditionally require significant licensing fees.

Discover Warwick Business School's Change Makers.