Code Room
CodingHardcod-g937
Subject GreedyLevel Senior–Staff~30 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

You can complete at most k projects to maximize your capital before an IPO. You start with w capital. Each project i requires a minimum capital capital[i] to start and, once finished, gives a one-time pure profit profits[i] added to your capital. You can only work one project at a time and each project at most once. Return the maximum final capital after completing at most k projects. There are at most 100000 projects, and k, w fit in 64-bit integers.

Implement
max_capital(k: int, w: int, profits: list[int], capital: list[int]) → int
Examples
in[2,0,[1,2,3],[0,1,1]]out4
What a strong answer looks like

State your approach and its time/space complexity out loud before you optimize. Handle the edge cases (empty input, duplicates, overflow), and say why you chose this over the brute force. Green tests are the floor, not the grade.

Vibe coding: describe the solution in plain language (or narrate it) and the coach grades your approach. Generating runnable code from your description is coming next.

Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.