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• Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2019 (Revised December 2019)

  Blenheim Chalcot

  John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

  In April 2019, Manoj Badale and Charles Mindenhall, co-founders of Blenheim Chalcot, were contemplating how they might go about developing their portfolio. Since founding the company as an internet consultancy called netdecisions in 1998, Badale and Mindenhall had transformed Blenheim Chalcot into the United Kingdom’s “leading digital venture builder,” having successfully built, and, in 15 instances, exited, 42 businesses across a number of sectors, including technology, financial services, sport, media, property, and education. In 2018, Blenheim Chalcot had portfolio sales of over £350 million and employed over 3,000 people.
  
  Unlike a traditional venture capital firm, Blenheim Chalcot was a “venture builder,” often developing its own ideas then bringing in and supporting entrepreneurs with a range of services and support, and funding them in return for a majority equity stake (typically 80-90%). The idea was to increase the probability of success by allowing the entrepreneurs and their teams to spend less time fundraising and dealing with time consuming tasks, such as property, recruitment, legal set up, and gaining access to a client network. This enabled the entrepreneur to focus more on product and customers. The downside of this approach was that the growth of the group was somewhat constrained by the founders’ own capital and their access to co-investment funds.
  
  As Badale and Mindenhall contemplated the future, they were asking themselves how they could best develop their ecosystem for building innovative businesses. In October 2018, they had opened an office in New York. They were also partnering with Imperial College London to open a 200,000 square-foot tech and innovation campus in early 2020. Should they continue on their current track? Or, should they be bolder, perhaps going public, adding new sectors, more businesses, bigger opportunities, and expanding into new geographic markets? How could they achieve these growth goals while maintaining sufficient control over the businesses? How could they achieve growth and maintain the quality of the businesses – and not spread themselves too thinly?

  Keywords: Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; United Kingdom; United States; India;

  Citation:

  Wells, John R., and Benjamin Weinstock. "Blenheim Chalcot." Harvard Business School Case 720-381, September 2019. (Revised December 2019.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2017 (Revised December 2019)

  CarMax, Inc.: Disrupting the Used-Car Market

  John R. Wells and Hong Luo

  Citation:

  Wells, John R., and Hong Luo. "CarMax, Inc.: Disrupting the Used-Car Market." Harvard Business School Case 717-506, April 2017. (Revised December 2019.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | July 2019 (Revised November 2019)

  Salary Finance

  John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

  In April 2019, Asesh Sarkar, co-founder and chief executive of Salary Finance Limited, a London-based FinTech, faced tough choices. Sarkar had founded Salary Finance with Dan Cobley and Daniel Shakhani in 2015. The company’s value proposition was quite simple: partner with employers to offer employees affordable loans that were repaid through automatic payroll deductions. Taking repayments directly from salary, and collecting those repayments in one transaction from the employer, dramatically reduced costs, saving employees large amounts of interest when compared to market alternatives like credit cards or payday lenders. For improving access to affordable credit, Salary Finance garnered considerable praise in the media, being named one of the UK’s most socially responsible and innovative FinTech companies. Since the beginning of 2018, Salary Finance had introduced a savings product and an earned income advance product that were linked to employee salary. In September 2018, they expanded to the United States, in partnership with the United Way, opening an office in Boston, Massachusetts. Sarkar was excited by the progress but was still pondering how best to accelerate further growth and improve the business. First there was the question of geographic expansion. Did it make sense to pursue other markets like India? Or, should he focus on building Salary Finance’s position in the UK and U.S.? In these markets, should he prioritize attracting new employers to the platform or adding new products such as mortgages or investments? Should he register as a bank, tapping into low-cost deposits and reducing the dependence on commercial borrowing to fund loans? Finally, he was concerned about how to best maintain Salary Finance’s culture—“For People Not Numbers”—during rapid growth. These questions and more weighed heavily on Sarkar’s mind as he considered the company’s future.

  Keywords: Credit; Financing and Loans; Wages; Innovation and Invention; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Culture; Decision Choices and Conditions; Financial Services Industry;

  Citation:

  Wells, John R., and Benjamin Weinstock. "Salary Finance." Harvard Business School Case 720-355, July 2019. (Revised November 2019.)  View Details

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