More from the Author

• Book | 2013

  Managing Startups: Best Blog Posts

  Tom Eisenmann

  Harvard Business School Professor Tom Eisenmann annually compiles the best posts from many blogs on technology startup management, primarily for the benefit of his students. This book makes his latest collection available to the broader entrepreneur community. Divided into 13 areas of focus, the book's contributors explore the metrics you need to run your startup, discuss lean prototyping techniques for hardware, identify costly outsourcing mistakes, provide practical tips on user acquisition, offer branding guidelines, and explain how a choir of angel investors often will sing different parts.

  Keywords: lean startup; Startup; prototyping; MVP; minimum viable product; freemium; SaaS; A/B Testing; Business Model;

  Citation:

  Eisenmann, Tom, ed. Managing Startups: Best Blog Posts. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2013.

  CiteView DetailsPurchase

  Related

• Case | HBS Case Collection | 2013 (Revised from original 2008 version)

  Bernd Beetz: Creating the New Coty

  Geoffrey Jones and David Kiron

  Considers the creation of the world's largest fragrance company by Bernd Beetz, appointed chief executive of Coty Inc. in 2001. In 1990 the German consumer goods company Benkiser began acquiring fragrance and cosmetics brands with the intent of developing a beauty business. These included the long-established, but relatively small, U.S. fragrance company Coty. In 1996 the beauty business was spun off under the name Coty. When Beetz was hired as chief executive, it was still a fragmented collection of recently acquired brands. The case describes how Beetz re-ignited the dormant celebrity fragrance business with the successful launch of a new Jennifer Lopez fragrance line. Fashioning a new entrepreneurial culture based on the principles of "faster, further, freer," Coty hired longstanding executives from other firms and liberated their entrepreneurial capabilities, refreshing brands which had been tarnished into a global mass color cosmetics brand. In 2005 the acquisition of Calvin Klein from Unilever, and its renewal, catapulted Coty into the position of the world's largest fragrance company. The case provides an opportunity to examine the entrepreneurial, cultural, and organizational factors which enable acquired brands and employees to be re-invigorated and molded into a dynamic new global business. It asks if the cultural and other factors behind its rapid growth can sustain the company as it seeks growth much further as a top-five beauty company.

  Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Entrepreneurship; Globalized Firms and Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Germany; United States;

  Citation:

  Jones, Geoffrey, and David Kiron. "Bernd Beetz: Creating the New Coty." Harvard Business School Case 808-133, April 2013. (Revised from original June 2008 version.)

  CiteView DetailsPurchase

  Related

• Case | HBS Case Collection | 2013 (Revised from original 2013 version)

  CloudFlare, Inc.: Running Hot?

  Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alex Godden

  In July 2012, the cofounders of CloudFlare, a Silicon Valley startup that protects websites and accelerates their traffic, are considering the implications of five employees' resignations over the prior three months. Was this natural attrition for a high-tech venture with a staff of 35 experiencing explosive growth, or were the resignations symptomatic of bigger issues with CloudFlare's culture and management processes? After describing CloudFlare's early history, business model, organization structure, and human resources policies, the case presents first-person accounts from employees regarding their reasons for resigning, and then asks whether CloudFlare's cofounders should take any corrective actions.

  Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Structure; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Growth Management; Web Sites; Entrepreneurship; Resignation and Termination; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; California;

  Citation:

  Eisenmann, Thomas R., and Alex Godden. "CloudFlare, Inc.: Running Hot?" Harvard Business School Case 813-145, March 2013. (Revised from original January 2013 version.)

  CiteView DetailsPurchase

  Related