What is SideHustle Labs?
SideHustle Labs is a 60 to 90 min facilitated entrepreneurship experience for students. Brainstorm, pitch, score, rotate. The format that gets quiet students leading by round three.
May 2, 2026 · 2 min read
What is SideHustle Labs?
SideHustle Labs is a 60 to 90 minute facilitated experience where students brainstorm a business idea in 4-5 person teams, pitch it to peers playing investors, and rotate roles every round. Teachers can run it themselves with the school's existing staff. No production crew, just one screen and four rounds.
The story
A Mars Hill University professor reached out after seeing the format and used the free SideHustle game with his class. He told us afterward that students were still trading the inside jokes weeks later — and that they'd been telling him it was the best class they'd ever had.
What he ran independently followed a skeleton similar to Labs: 4-5 students per table, a random business name and industry on the screen, three minutes to brainstorm, one pitcher per team, the Investor team asked one unscripted follow-up question, score on Funny + Fundable, rotate, repeat. By round three, students who hadn't spoken in class all semester were leading their team's pitch.
What it means
Pitching isn't a presentation skill. It's an improvisation skill. You can't teach it from slides because the muscle only shows up when you take prep away. SideHustle Labs is the format we built around that one observation. It works in classrooms, camps, and cohorts. The only requirement is a room of students and a screen. For the full educator playbook, see the educator guide to teaching entrepreneurship through play.
Try it
- Play the game free at playsidehustle.com so you can feel the format
- Catch us live: next show is Sept 25 at Pershing Hall in Austin. All dates at luma.com/playsidehustle
Try SideHustle free with your students
SideHustle is edutainment: students pitch funny and fundable business ideas and learn to think on their feet, no slides and no worksheets. It runs in a single class period and scales from a handful of students to a whole grade. Opt in to play free and bring it to class this week.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is SideHustle Labs?+
SideHustle Labs is a 60 to 90 minute facilitated entrepreneurship experience for high school and university classrooms. Students brainstorm a business idea in 4-5 person teams, pitch it to peers playing investors, and rotate roles every round. Teachers can run it themselves with the school's existing staff.
Have educators used the free SideHustle game in classrooms?+
Yes. Educators across multiple universities have independently used the free online SideHustle game with their students.
How long does SideHustle Labs take?+
60 to 90 minutes. Setup runs 10 minutes, then four rounds of brainstorm-pitch-score-rotate at roughly 20 minutes each, with a 15-minute debrief at the end. It fits a standard class block schedule.