Busbud: Building a Data Company

The case features the work of LP Maurice (HBS '08) as he decides to take on the fragmented bus travel industry and launch an online business that aggregates and shares bus schedules for routes around the world. His first challenge: finding that the data he needs is scattered, siloed, and sometimes offline. The case follows him and his team as they take on challenges as the start-up evolves and develops. Topics include acquiring data, web-based prototyping to understand customer preferences, and customer acquisition and retention metrics (SEO & SEM), and strategic choices around transforming from a B-to-C organization to a B-to-B enterprise. This case was written for the second-year MBA course "Managing with Data Science." The course provides MBA students with no programming experience an introduction to the field of data science and its applications in business. Students learn to (1) carefully articulate the business ask, (2) reason carefully from the “ask,” through metrics and models, and outputs; and (3) evaluate outputs from models to (4) develop a plan for action.