David Hysong and SHEPHERD Therapeutics

Ananth   Raman; John   Masko; Aldo  Sesia

Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2018

David Hysong and SHEPHERD Therapeutics

by Ananth Raman, John Masko and Aldo Sesia

Abstract

In 2016, David Hysong, at age 27, found out he had a rare, incurable cancer. Rather than wait around to die, Hysong, a recent graduate of Harvard Divinity School, decided to launch a biotechnology company called Shepherd Therapeutics to development treatments for his and other rare cancers. Two years later, the company had several drugs in promising stages of development but were at least 3 to 5 years away from commercialization, if they made it through clinical trials successfully. Only about 4% of drugs that enter clinical trials receive U.S. FDA approval. It is October 2018, and Shepherd is running out of money. Hysong needs to raise $5 million to fund operations for 2019 and at least $20 million for the following few years. But the company is too early to attract the type of venture capital he needs. Even if he got financing, Hysong worried that the company’s mission could be compromised by investors more interested in a return on their investment than saving lives, and he worried about the scaling challenges ahead.

Keywords: cancer; therapeutics; drugs; Health Care and Treatment; Business Startups; Product Development; Financing and Loans; Growth and Development Strategy; Problems and Challenges;

Language: English

Format: Print

24 pages

Educators

Citation:

Raman, Ananth, John Masko, and Aldo Sesia. "David Hysong and SHEPHERD Therapeutics." Harvard Business School Case 619-012, November 2018.

Railroad magnate Jay Gould, a controversial figure in the history of U.S. capitalism, was a disruptive influence on an industry that had previously relied on formal and informal agreements to move traffic long distances across lines operated by different companies. Gould and his competitors replaced these agreements with consolidation and system-building, a process which led to the rise of government regulation of railroads in the 1880s and to widespread railroad bankruptcies in the 1890s. This case explores the growth of early American railroads, places Gould’s career in context (including his famous attempt to corner the U.S. gold market), and demonstrates the implications of his activities on competitive dynamics in the railroad industry.

Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2018 (Revised February 2019)

JUUL and the Vaping Revolution

Michael W. Toffel, John Masko and Sarah Mehta

In the summer of 2018, San Francisco–based electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) maker JUUL Labs, was experiencing exponential growth. Sales of its JUUL e-cigarette had increased by 783% over the preceding year, projected revenues for 2018 topped $940 million, and the company had captured over 72% of the U.S. e-cigarette market. The company’s success had thrust it into the spotlight, and JUUL Labs found itself at the center of considerable controversy. Whereas the company’s stated goal was to provide tobacco smokers with a less harmful e-cigarette alternative, JUUL Labs’s products had proven widely popular with teenage high school students who had never smoked. Some advocacy groups and public policy makers speculated that the company had purposefully marketed its products to minors—an allegation JUUL Labs’s executives strongly denied. The company now faced an FDA probe and investigations by at least two state attorney generals. It needed a strategy to deal with its mounting regulatory and public relations problems.

Keywords: electronic cigarettes; E-Cigarettes; vaping; Nicotine Replacement; JUUL; Juuling; Advertising; Online Advertising; Customers; Innovation and Invention; Marketing; Ethics; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Issues; Technology; Technology Industry;

Citation:

Toffel, Michael W., John Masko, and Sarah Mehta. "JUUL and the Vaping Revolution." Harvard Business School Case 619-006, November 2018. (Revised February 2019.) View Details

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In 2003, 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes founded a startup dedicated to making blood testing easier and more affordable. By 2015, her company, Theranos, was worth $9 billion. It boasted a star-studded board and contracts with national pharmacy and supermarket chains Walgreens and Safeway to bring Theranos technology, which could purportedly perform hundreds of tests with a pinprick of blood, to consumers around the country. Over the next few years, however, Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou published a series of articles demonstrating that Theranos’ proprietary technology produced inaccurate results, relied heavily on non-proprietary devices to perform its tests, and violated multiple regulatory standards. In 2018, after a three-year stream of revelations about the company’s operating practices, corporate culture, and technology, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Theranos with fraud and the company soon collapsed.

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David Hysong and SHEPHERD Therapeutics

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