Career Focus

Scaling Technology Ventures (STV) is designed for students who aspire to found, join, or invest in growth-stage technology ventures. Students will learn how leadership teams address the challenges and opportunities ventures face after achieving profit-market fit – and how to activate and then manage exponential growth.

The course reflects the recent shift in market sentiment from “growth at all costs” to profitable growth, in placing particular emphasis on how ventures scale by achieving not just product-market fit, but profit-market fit, too.

Classes cover a diverse array of tech sectors, including e-commerce, ed-tech, enterprise SaaS, HR-tech, mobile apps and gaming, marketplace platforms, mobility solutions, social media, two-sided platforms, and the metaverse.

Educational Objectives

The course exists to address a gap in management research between what the scholarly literature defines as the two fundamental stages of venture development – exploration and exploitation. This way of thinking leaves out a critical phase that connects these two, which we call extrapolation. This refers to the period of dramatic top-line growth that occurs in the middle portion of a standard S-curve, after a venture has confirmed product-market fit and often raised its first round of institutional financing.

Adopting the perspective of a CEO, a founder, or a functional leader, cases in the course frame many of the critical opportunities and challenges associated with activating exponential growth, and then managing through the extrapolation phase as the venture scales. Scaling situations are presented through a variety of functional lenses, including strategy, product management, sales and marketing, engineering and technology, talent, and operations.

In nearly every class, the course will host case protagonists – largely founders, CEOs, and some VCs – as guests.

Students will also have the opportunity to participate in several optional workshops with guests and outside experts. In past years, topics have included product management, performance marketing, VC investing, and managing DEIA.

Enrollment in STV is limited to 70 students per section. STV is a natural companion course to Launching Technology Ventures (LTV), though LTV is not a prerequisite.

Course Content

Through case discussions and dialogue with company founders, STV examines executive leadership and functional management challenges in scaling ventures after the "search and discovery" stage of startup evolution. Cases include Asana, BlaBlaCar, Catalant, Chegg, Chewy, Cobalt Robotics, Nextdoor, OhmConnect, Perch, Linden Lab, Roblox, Supercell, Shopify, thredUP, Tiktok, Wayfair, WeWork, and Zoom, among others.

These challenges are organized around six modules that are part of the Six S Scaling Framework. Together, these represent external and internal enablers of successful scaling:

Activating Growth

Strategic Opportunity and Market: What does it take to “cross the chasm” to the early majority? How large is the serviceable addressable market, and will it support scaling? How scalable and repeatable is the business model?

Scope and Speed: How does a venture scale by expanding into new geographies, products, and markets? What does it take to manage multiple revenue streams? How fast should such expansion or diversification take place?

Solution: What constitutes a repeatable and scalable offer? How does it maintain sufficient homogeneity to scale effectively, while achieving sufficient differentiation to fend off competitors?

Managing Growth

Structure: When and how should a rapidly scaling venture introduce more formal roles, systems, and processes? What organizational design choices favor scaling? What is the trade-off between reliability and adaptability?

Senior Team: When should ventures replace founders with “professional” CEOs? How should ventures onboard experienced executives into leadership positions? When should you start hiring specialists over generalists?

Spirit: How do leaders in scaling ventures design culture? How do they assimilate hires who are less mission-driven and more political than the first wave of recruits? How can they mitigate friction between the old guard and newer talent?

Students have a choice between taking a final exam and completing a final project in the course. The project asks students to apply course concepts to a scaling venture. For the project, students are encouraged to work in teams with a venture and then prepare a report presenting their analyses and conclusions.

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