Inspiration
Most small business owners make major decisions, hiring, pricing, expansion based on gut feel. We wanted to build the tool we wished existed: a CFO in your pocket that can run millions of calculations in an instant.
What it does
Augur is a business strategy simulator. You describe your business and goals, and Augur searches millions of decision paths across your planning horizon, surfacing the top 3 strategies ranked by what you care about, cash, profit, or growth. Every strategy comes with a full move-by-move playbook and projected outcomes.
How we built it
A Java beam-search simulation engine on the backend evaluates decision trees using a custom scoring model with state-aware adjustments. The frontend is React, an animated tree visualization shows the search in real time, then resolves into ranked strategy cards with cash progression charts and detailed breakdowns.
Challenges we ran into
Getting the scorer right was the hardest part. Early versions let any path hit 100, making the top 3 look identical. We also had to prevent the beam from always favoring short-term wins like price raises that quietly destroy your addressable market once capacity opens up.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The simulation actually produces non-obvious, financially sound strategies. It correctly identifies that upgrading utilities before marketing is almost always the right first move, and penalizes paths that look good short-term but hurt you later.
What we learned
Beam search needs to project to the full horizon before pruning, not just score the immediate next state. And scoring systems need absolute reference points, relative normalization across 3 paths will always make the worst one look terrible even if it's genuinely good.
What's next for Augur
Multi-business-type support, longer horizons, and letting users define their own levers and cost structures, so Augur works for any business, not just coffee shops.
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