Five firms. Five quiet catastrophes. The evidence is on your desk. The hours are short. The verdict is yours to render.
Each case is a body of evidence. No villain confesses in chapter one. Read everything. Build a timeline. Name the leak — and prove how you'd plug it with something you can ship by Monday.
Read every piece of evidence once before forming a theory. The first read is for understanding. The second read is where the leak shows itself. Resist the urge to diagnose on page one.
Slack threads, call logs, email chains, CRM exports, dashboards, the occasional handwritten memo. Some clues matter. Some are red herrings. Treat each artefact as testimony.
There is no single right answer. Multiple readings are valid. You will be judged on the strength of your reasoning — what you noticed, what you ruled out, and why.
Once the leak is named, you build. Ninety minutes. A Claude project, a Lovable app, an n8n flow, a script, a dashboard — whatever fits the leak. Technical or no-code. The Bureau is indifferent to your stack.
Five-minute presentation. Walk us through your timeline, your diagnosis, your build. The Bureau is unforgiving but fair.
No googling the case. No comparing notes with someone working a different case. Claude, Lovable, and friends are welcome — but the reasoning must be yours. The Bureau notices.
Once your project is ready, submit it at built.growthx.club. The Bureau reviews every submission.
Every case file is sealed. To open one, you'll need to solve a small word puzzle on the case page itself — a clue and a word with missing letters. Read the clue, fill in the word, and the file unseals.
From the sidebar on the left, click the case file you've been assigned.
You'll see a one-line clue and a word with some letters missing — for example, M _ S T _ R Y
Fill in the blanks in your head. Type the full word into the box below and press Unlock. Get it right, and the file opens.
A candle company says they are making four times their ad spend back. The bank account disagrees.
Solve the word puzzle below to unlock the evidence within.
The art of figuring out which ad actually earned the sale — and which one is taking credit for someone else’s work.
Heatherwick Wax Co. is a 2-year-old candle company. They sell on their own website (Shopify), Amazon, and Nykaa. Eight months ago they hired Florence as Head of Marketing. She runs Meta and Google ads.
Every Monday, Florence shares a "weekly numbers" update in Slack. Her dashboards look amazing — ROAS at 4×, growing 20% month-on-month. The team celebrates.
But Edmund, the founder, has been quietly worried. The bank balance does not match the celebration. He has asked you to take a look.
Edmund,
Total revenue last month, all channels combined (Shopify + Amazon + Nykaa): ₹15L.
Total ad spend last month (Meta + Google + a small Snap test): ₹10L.
So we netted ₹5L before any other costs. Same as the month before. Nothing's grown.
— Priya
A few possibilities the Bureau has flagged. Treat these as starting points, not verdicts. Multiple readings are valid — and the right answer may not be on this list at all. Pen and paper for your own diagnosis.
Ninety minutes. Build something that gives Edmund one number he can trust every Monday morning. Anything that surfaces the truth fits.
A suggested toolkit lives in the Appendix. Pick whatever you can ship in the time you have — Claude, Lovable, n8n, a Google Sheet with formulas, anything that gets the job done.
A fintech CTO says there are no good engineers in India. Twelve hundred candidates have something to say about that.
Solve the word puzzle below to unlock the evidence within.
The thing every fair hiring process needs — written down, not in someone’s head.
Ravensworth & Co. raised Series A nine months ago and promised investors they'd hire 15 engineers in six months. They've hired 4. The CTO, Reginald, has started telling people "the Indian engineering market is broken — there's no talent."
Beatrice, who runs People Ops, is exhausted. She set up a new "AI resume screener" three months ago to help her get through the volume. Since then, things have only gotten worse — but the dashboard says everything is fine.
You've been asked to figure out why the hiring pipeline is bleeding.
STATUS: ON TRACK PER AI SCREENER CONFIDENCE SCORING ✅
A few possibilities the Bureau has flagged. Treat these as starting points, not verdicts. Multiple readings are valid — and the right answer may not be on this list at all. Pen and paper for your own diagnosis.
Ninety minutes. Build something that helps Beatrice see who's getting rejected and why — not just who's getting through.
A suggested toolkit lives in the Appendix. Pick whatever you can ship in the time you have — Claude, Lovable, n8n, a Google Sheet with formulas, anything that gets the job done.
A B2B SaaS forecasts confidently every quarter. Every quarter they miss. Every quarter, the same explanation.
Solve the word puzzle below to unlock the evidence within.
A confident number for next quarter that nobody seems able to actually hit.
Whitford & Hale sells workflow software to mid-market companies. They have one senior salesperson, Bea, who has been there for two years and brings in 70% of the pipeline. They have a sales lead, Hugo, who pulls up the forecast every Monday and announces a confident number.
The number is wrong. They've missed forecast by ~40% three quarters in a row. Hugo's explanation is the same every time: "Q4 will be the inflection."
Marcus, the CEO, has stopped believing the explanation. He's brought you in before the next board call.
| Account | ARR | Stage | Days in Stage | Last reply from customer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pemberton Logistics | ₹60L | Negotiation | 150 days | 2 months ago |
| Ashford Retail | ₹50L | Negotiation | 190 days | 3 months ago |
| Brookfield FMCG | ₹80L | Negotiation | 200 days | 2 months ago |
| Crestmont Mfg | ₹40L | Negotiation | 110 days | 3 weeks ago |
| Hartley Foods | ₹95L | Negotiation | 170 days | 2 months ago |
Average days in "Negotiation" across the rest of the team: 30. Bea's average: 164.
Hi Bea,
Honest update — we went with another vendor in January. The decision was made by our Head of Ops, who I wasn't able to introduce you to despite trying.
Wishing the team well.
— Naina
| Salesperson | Deals in "Negotiation" | Of those, % that actually closed |
|---|---|---|
| Bea Carrington | 22 (last 12 months) | 11% |
| Other AEs (combined) | 38 | 58% |
Note: the forecast model assumes "Negotiation" stage closes at 70% across all reps.
A few possibilities the Bureau has flagged. Treat these as starting points, not verdicts. Multiple readings are valid — and the right answer may not be on this list at all. Pen and paper for your own diagnosis.
Ninety minutes. Build something that gives Marcus a forecast he can actually trust — based on what's really happening in deals, not what salespeople say is happening.
A suggested toolkit lives in the Appendix. Pick whatever you can ship in the time you have — Claude, Lovable, n8n, a Google Sheet with formulas, anything that gets the job done.
A productivity app ships features every week. Their power users love it. Everyone else is quietly leaving.
Solve the word puzzle below to unlock the evidence within.
The plan that decides what gets built — and, by extension, who gets ignored.
Lockwood Atlas is a productivity app — task lists, calendar, notes. Three years old. Loved by a small group of "power users" who use it 5 hours a day and post about it on Twitter.
The team ships features fast. The CEO, Cassia, talks personally to a Slack group of 12 power users and turns their requests into roadmap items. The product gets more powerful every month.
And yet revenue is shrinking. Cassia thinks the answer is to ship faster. Wystan, the head of product, thinks the answer is something else entirely. He just hasn't been able to get her to listen.
| User segment | How many | % of revenue | Retention (1 year) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Power users (top 1%) | ~150 | ~5% | 95% |
| Regular paying users (rest) | ~10,000 | ~95% | 62% |
Cassia,
Quick one. I pulled retention by user segment for the last year. Two very different stories:
· The 12 power users in your Slack: 95% retention. Loving it.
· Everyone else (~10,000 paying users): 62% retention, and falling.
Imogen's churn calls all say the same thing: too complex, too many changes. We're shipping for the people who won't leave, while losing the people who pay the bills.
Can we find 30 minutes this week?
— W
A few possibilities the Bureau has flagged. Treat these as starting points, not verdicts. Multiple readings are valid — and the right answer may not be on this list at all. Pen and paper for your own diagnosis.
Ninety minutes. Build something that helps Wystan hear the quiet 99% — the regular paying users whose voices never reach the roadmap.
A suggested toolkit lives in the Appendix. Pick whatever you can ship in the time you have — Claude, Lovable, n8n, a Google Sheet with formulas, anything that gets the job done.
A meditation app celebrates installs every Monday. By the next Monday, almost nobody is left.
Solve the word puzzle below to unlock the evidence within.
The number that lies less than installs ever will.
Marlowe & Finch is a meditation app. Two years old. Every Monday the growth team celebrates installs, which are up 40% quarter-on-quarter. The dashboard is a beautiful gradient going up and to the right.
There is another number — D7 retention. That's what percentage of users come back a week after they install. A year ago it was 19%. Now it is 9%. Of every 100 people who download, 91 are gone within a week.
The growth lead, Imelda, blames the product. The CEO, Cosmo, blames onboarding. A junior PM has been quietly tracking something different — and nobody has asked him about it.
Note: the Monday standup only shows installs and cost-per-install. Retention exists but is on a tab nobody opens.
| What new users did in week 1 | % of installs | Their D7 retention |
|---|---|---|
| Listened to ≥30 sec (the "activated" definition) | 78% | 9% |
| Completed 1 full meditation (≥5 min) | 12% | 42% |
| Completed 3 meditations in week 1 | 4% | 71% |
Translation: the official "activated" metric (78%, looks great) does not predict retention at all. The real predictor is "3 meditations in week 1." Almost nobody hits it.
Without push permission, the app cannot remind users to come back. The drop in opt-in lined up exactly with the onboarding redesign.
A few possibilities the Bureau has flagged. Treat these as starting points, not verdicts. Multiple readings are valid — and the right answer may not be on this list at all. Pen and paper for your own diagnosis.
Ninety minutes. Build something that gives the team a clearer view of what actually predicts retention — not just installs.
A suggested toolkit lives in the Appendix. Pick whatever you can ship in the time you have — Claude, Lovable, n8n, a Google Sheet with formulas, anything that gets the job done.
Five minutes per investigator. The rubric below is shared with all judges. Reasoning beats polish; honesty beats certainty; a working build beats an elegant deck.
"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.
Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
— A. C. D., 1891
A suggested toolkit. Pick one or two — do not pick six. The Bureau favours focus.
For ingesting evidence, drafting prompts, generating briefs. Pin your case files as Project knowledge. Claude does the heavy thinking; you do the framing.
Spin up a dashboard, a triage tool, a daily-brief inbox in under an hour. Best for anything a human will look at every day.
Stitches APIs without code. Pull from Sheets, fan out to Slack, run on a schedule. The unsexy backbone of every shipped automation.
Where structured data lives. Connect via API or webhook. The boring, dependable filing cabinet. Do not overlook.
Where the brief lands. A two-paragraph daily digest in #leadership beats a perfect dashboard nobody opens.
Transcribes calls. Feed transcripts into Claude. Sales and CS cases come alive when the actual words are on the table.
If the workflow needs custom logic, drop into a code editor. Claude can write the script; you orchestrate. Use sparingly.
If your build needs persistence beyond a Sheet. Free tiers are generous. Don't reach for it unless you must.
You are not here to ship a perfect product. You are here to render a verdict. The best detectives in this room will not be the ones who built the prettiest dashboard — they will be the ones who, when asked, can defend with a straight face why the leak is what they say it is, and why their workflow plugs it. Build less. Notice more. Be specific.
The evidence is on your desk. The clock starts when you open the file.