Catalant: The Future of Work?

Thomas  Eisenmann; Jeffrey F. Rayport; Christine  Snively

Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2017 (Revised October 2018)

Catalant: The Future of Work?

by Thomas Eisenmann, Jeffrey F. Rayport and Christine Snively

Abstract

Catalant, founded in 2013 as an online marketplace where MBAs could bid on consulting projects posted by small- to medium-sized businesses, had expanded by 2016 to provide Fortune 1000 companies with access to over 35,000 independent experts. The founders envisioned extending their matching solutions to help enterprises staff projects with a mix of current employees and external experts, hypothesizing that the “future of work” would involve more flexible employment arrangements. They debated how much to invest in new functionality versus improving their existing marketplace and how to pitch their evolving strategic vision to investors.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Recruitment; Labor; Market Platforms; Growth and Development Strategy; Employment Industry; Consulting Industry; United States;

Language: English

Format: Print

25 pages

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Citation:

Eisenmann, Thomas, Jeffrey F. Rayport, and Christine Snively. "Catalant: The Future of Work?" Harvard Business School Case 817-103, March 2017. (Revised October 2018.)

Fred Shilmover and Sam Clemens prepared for their fourth quarter board meeting. They were excited to have scaled their software startup, InsightSquared, to $2 million in revenue and secured an $8 million round of venture capital. However, they disagreed on the path ahead, specifically on the sales and marketing plan. Shilmover preferred a sales-centric approach to growth while Clemens preferred a marketing-centric one. Which strategy was optimal for their venture’s next phase of growth?

Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2019

Wayfair

Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie Ma and Matthew Preble

In 2016 Niraj Shah and Steve Conine, founders of online home goods retailer Wayfair, are faced with a decision about how to improve user experience on their e-commerce sites. A key driver of consumer interest and conversion to purchase in the home category is visual imagery, which has traditionally been generated not by the retail channel rather than by manufacturers. Catalog retailers, in particular, are famous for visually romancing the category. As a comprehensive offering, Wayfair hosts over seven million SKUs on its site, so it must solve for the lack of visual assets from manufacturers by generating visual assets of its own. Initially, the company embarks on a plan to produce these images using traditional photography studios and professional staffs, but costs mount and throughput is too slow. Seeking a solution, Shah and Conine assess the likelihood of using technology – specifically, high-resolution 3D modeling from low-resolution 2D images – to address the challenge. Resolving this issue is especially pressing, given that Wayfair has just launched private label lines and a host of what it calls lifestyle brands, which require support from high-end visual merchandising. As a consequence, the question of how to provision visual assets becomes a question of how fast Wayfair can grow. This case presents the factors involved in deciding what direction to take – a reliable path using traditional methods or a risky path using bleeding-edge technologies.

Keywords: visual assets; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Business or Company Management; Growth Management; Innovation and Invention; Operations; Strategy; Technology; Retail Industry; Service Industry; United States; Massachusetts;