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• Case | HBS Case Collection | December 2020

  Prime Coalition: Catalytic Capital for Climate Innovation

  Ramana Nanda, Benjamin N. Roth and Olivia Hull

  With long development timelines and high risk, new energy technologies were often left to languish in the “valley of death,” unable to raise enough funds to bring a product to market. In 2014, Sarah Kearney founded the nonprofit Prime Coalition to solve this problem. At the beginning, Prime’s role as a financial intermediary involved seeking out the most promising market-based technology solutions to climate change and recruiting foundations or philanthropists to fund them. In 2019, Prime changed course, adopting a portfolio approach with its Prime Impact Fund. By the end of the year, Prime had raised $40 million in philanthropic capital for its new fund. Once the funds were invested in promising energy startups, Prime planned to try its hand at recruiting traditional investors to back the same companies. Could Kearney convince traditional investors that these investments were worth the risks?

  Keywords: Energy Conservation; Renewable Energy; Social Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Mission and Purpose; Science-Based Business; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Enterprise; Energy Industry; Technology Industry; Green Technology Industry; United States;

  Citation:

  Nanda, Ramana, Benjamin N. Roth, and Olivia Hull. "Prime Coalition: Catalytic Capital for Climate Innovation." Harvard Business School Case 820-007, February 2020.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | January 2020

  Khan Academy 2018 (Abridged)

  William A. Sahlman and Nicole Tempest Keller

  Citation:

  Sahlman, William A., and Nicole Tempest Keller. "Khan Academy 2018 (Abridged)." Harvard Business School Case 820-086, January 2020.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | October 2019 (Revised January 2020)

  NewView Capital and Venture Capital Secondaries

  Shai Bernstein, Ramana Nanda and Allison Ciechanover

  While still a general partner at Silicon Valley-based New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Ravi Viswanathan considered the challenges presented by evolving market dynamics in the venture capital space. Startups were staying private longer, which led to limited partners thirsty for liquidity and venture capital funds managing overloaded portfolios. Viswanathan and the senior leaders of NEA orchestrated the purchase of 31 NEA unrealized portfolio companies by the newly created $1.35 billion NewView Capital spinout that he would head. This secondary transaction provided liquidity to NEA’s limited partners and reallocated NEA partners’ time to shepherd other portfolio companies, while at the same time allowing NewView Capital to reap gains from future exits from a portfolio of diverse, high-quality growth stage technology companies. Now, as he prepares to raise Fund II, Viswanathan acknowledges that the unique circumstances that enabled the launch of Fund I would not be replicable, and he must consider alternative strategies to pursue next. Should he continue to focus on secondary transactions, focus on direct investments, or some combination of the two?

  Keywords: Venture Capital; Capital Markets; Private Equity; Strategy;

  Citation:

  Bernstein, Shai, Ramana Nanda, and Allison Ciechanover. "NewView Capital and Venture Capital Secondaries." Harvard Business School Case 820-038, October 2019. (Revised January 2020.)  View Details

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