Faculty & Research
Jeffrey J. Bussgang

Jeffrey J. Bussgang

Senior Lecturer of Business Administration

Senior Lecturer of Business Administration

Jeffrey J. Bussgang is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at the Harvard Business School as well as Co-Founder and General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm.  He studies lean startups as well as strategy and management challenges for founders.  He teaches Launching Technology Ventures in the MBA Elective Curriculum (a class focusing on pre-product-market fit startups) and oversees the Rock Venture Partners program (a year-long seminar for aspiring venture capitalists in the elective curriculum).

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General Partner, Flybridge Capital Partners

Former entrepreneur turned VC, HBS Senior Lecturer, author, dad of three, husband of one, civic leader, Cross Fitter and fan of all Boston sports.

Jeffrey J. Bussgang is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at the Harvard Business School as well as Co-Founder and General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm.  He studies lean startups as well as strategy and management challenges for founders.  He teaches Launching Technology Ventures in the MBA Elective Curriculum (a class focusing on product-market fit startups) and oversees the Rock Venture Partners program (a year-long seminar for aspiring venture capitalists).

Jeff’s investment interests and entrepreneurial experience are in blockchain, consumer, e-commerce, machine learning, and mobile start-ups. On behalf of Flybridge, he has led investments in dozens of companies, including Analytical Space, bloXroute, Bowery Farming, Codecademy, DataXu, Enigma, Plastiq, and ZestFinance. Jeff is also the cofounder of The Graduate Syndicate, a micro-seed fund that invests in recent Harvard graduates.

Prior to Flybridge, Jeff co-founded and served as President, Chief Operating Officer and Board Director at Upromise, a loyalty marketing and financial services firm that was acquired by Sallie Mae. He also served as Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Business Development, Vice President of Worldwide Professional Services and head of Product Management at Open Market, an Internet commerce software leader that went public in 1996. Prior to Open Market, Jeff was with the strategy consulting firm, The Boston Consulting Group.

In 2017, Jeff authored a book for startup joiners, Entering StartUpLand:  An Essential Guide to Finding the Right Job. In 2010, Jeff authored a book on venture capital and entrepreneurship, Mastering the VC Game, to provide entrepreneurs an insider’s guide to financing and company-building. The book has been hailed by the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, TechCrunch and The Financial Times as an essential guide for entrepreneurs.  The first chapter of Mastering the VC Game can be downloaded here.

Jeff is an active community member, serving as co-chairman of the board of educational non-profit, Facing History and Ourselves, co-founder and co-chair of an immigration reform non-profit, the Global EIR Coalition, and co-founder and chair of the progressive policy organization, The Alliance for Business Leadership. Jeff also serves on the board of EdX, the massively open online course provider created through a joint venture between Harvard and MIT.

Jeff holds a BA in Computer Science from Harvard University where he graduated magna cum laude and an MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar and a Ford Scholar.

Featured Work
Launching Technology Ventures

Launching Technology Ventures (LTV) is an MBA elective designed for students who will join startups, launch their own companies, or work in established firms launching information technology products, in particular, new ventures in the Internet, mobile, and enterprise software sectors. The course was created by Professors Jeffrey Bussgang and Tom Eisenmann.

Entering StartUpLand: An Essential Guide to Finding the Right Job

Many professionals aspire to work for a start-up. Executives from large companies view them as models to help them adapt to today’s dynamic innovation economy. Yes, start-ups look magical, but they can also be chaotic and inaccessible. Many books are written for those who aspire to be founders, but a company only has one or two of those. What’s needed are hundreds of employees to do the day-to-day work required to operate a fledgling company and grow it into something of value.

This practical, step-by-step guide provides an insider’s analysis of various start-up roles and responsibilities, including product development, marketing, growth strategy, and sales, to help you figure out if you want to join a start-up and what to expect if you do. You’ll gain insight into how successful start-ups operate and learn to assess which of them you might want to join―or emulate. Inside this book you’ll find:

  • A tour of typical start-up roles to help you determine which one might be the best fit for you
  • Profiles of start-up executives in many different functions who share their stories and describe their responsibilities
  • A practical approach to your job search that will help you position yourself to find the start-up opportunity that’s right for you

    Written by an experienced venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and Harvard Business School professor, Entering StartUpLand will guide you as you seek your ideal entry point into this popular, cutting-edge organizational paradigm.

Mastering the VC Game
A VC insider reveals how start-ups can successfully finance and launch their venture.

Entrepreneurs who dream of building the next Amazon, Facebook or Google have the opportunity to take advantage of one of the most powerful economic engines the world has ever known: venture capital. To do so, you need to woo, impress, and persuade venture capitalists to take a risk on an unproven endeavor. Getting funding is challenge enough, but choosing the right investor and creating a good working relationship can be harder still. You want your VC to act as a partner and adviser, not as an adversary who cares more about a quick return than about realizing the vision of your company.

Jeffrey Bussgang is one of the few people who have played on both sides of this high-stakes game. By his early thirties, he had helped build two successful start-ups—one went public, the other was acquired. Now he uses his experience and unique perspective on "the other side" as a venture capitalist helping entrepreneurs bring their dreams to fruition.

Bussgang offers detailed insights, colorful stories, and practical advice gathered from his own experience as well as from interviews with dozens of the most successful players on both sides of the game, including Twitter's Jack Dorsey and LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman. He reveals how to get noticed, perfect a pitch, and negotiate a partnership that
works for everyone.

An insider's guide to the secrets of the world of venture capital, Mastering the VC Game will prove invaluable for entrepreneurs seeking capital and successful partnerships.

Seeing Both Sides
VC Perspectives From a Former Entrepreneur
The purpose of this blog is to provide transparency into the venture capital process and to give entrepreneurs advice on company building.
Cases Featuring Jeff

Jeff’s involvement with Open Market and Upromise has been the subject of the following cases.

UPromise 2002:  Describes a set of decisions confronting the senior management of a company that has established a loyalty rewards program allocating cash to tax-advantaged college savings accounts for participants. The company has recruited a new CEO and needs to raise additional capital in the post-Internet bubble period.

Citation:  Sahlman, William A. “Upromise 2002.” Harvard Business School Case 804-058, September 2003.


UPromise:  Describes the development of UPromise, a company that has developed a loyalty program through which corporate partners can contribute to funds that finance the education of consumers' children. Presents the accomplishments prior to the company's second round of financing and asks students to consider how the recent NASDAQ drop could or should affect the company's ability to raise money.

Citation: Sahlman, William A.,  Michael J. Roberts. “UPromise.” Harvard Business School Case 801-321, November 2000.


Open Market, Inc.: The E-Commerce Wars: Continues the story of Open Market, Inc., a company founded in 1994 to support electronic commerce on the Internet. Despite a very successful initial public offering, the firm had reached a growth plateau, and the management team was considering several strategic options. Should it focus on building market share of its simple "storefront" product shop site (which was targeted at small e-merchants) or develop new channels for their high-end order-processing software, Transact? The 1999 holiday season was rapidly approaching, and Open Market's management team hoped to benefit from a predicted surge in online sales.

Citation: Cash, James I., Janis Gogan, Micahel Haselkorn, and Mani Subramani. “Open Market, Inc.: The E-Commerce Wars.” Harvard Business School Case 800-255, October 2000. (Revised from original February 2000 version.)


Open Market, Inc.: Managing in a Turbulent Environment: Presents the story of Open Market, Inc., one of numerous companies formed in 1994 to engage in electronic commerce over the Internet. This case examines the company's development--its business strategy and organization evolution--as the company increased in size and gained a firm foothold in the uncertain electronic commerce.

Citation: Applegate, Lynda M., Janis L. Gogan. “Open Market, Inc.: Managing in a Turbulent Environment.” Harvard Business School Case 196-097. August 1996. (Revised from original March 1996 version.)

Books
Journal Articles
Cases and Teaching Materials
Book Chapters
Research Summary
Overview

Start Up Strategy and Management

Jeff’s research focuses on applying Lean Startup principles to early-stage technology companies as well as the challenges and opportunities when scaling startups. His work led to the creation of an MBA elective course Launching Technology Ventures in partnership with Professor Tom Eisenmann and a series of case studies, teaching notes and HBR articles on startups, startup management and scaling startups. Jeff's research on deconstructing startup management and best practices led to the writing of his book, Entering StartUpLand, published by Harvard Business Review Press.

Venture Capital

Jeff’s work on how to raise venture capital culminated in a book, Mastering the VC Game, published by Penguin’s Portfolio. He wrote a chapter on VC financing in the book Entrepreneur Readings: Partnering With Venture Capitalists. Jeff also researches how to achieve alignment between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

Boston Start Up Ecosystem

Jeff's work on characterizing the start up ecosystem in Boston is part of an annual review presented to the Harvard community at the iLab and can be found at www.slideshare.net/bussgang.

Teaching
Overview

Launching Technology Ventures

Career Focus
Launching Technology Ventures (LTV) is designed for students who are actively working on their own startups or who will work at early-stage startups, launching information technology products. The course material is, in particular, focused on new businesses in the Internet, mobile, and enterprise software sectors, although the lessons from these sectors are quite generalized.

Educational Objectives
Extending concepts introduced in the MBA Required Curriculum course, The Entrepreneurial Manager, LTV explores in greater depth "lean startup" management practices as well as scaling challenges in startups. The course takes the perspective of not just the founder but also functional leaders in product management, sales, and business development. LTV will emphasize implementation rather than strategy issues, and will avoid overlap with concepts covered in Entrepreneurial Finance and Founders' Dilemmas.

Course Content and Organization
LTV is organized into classroom and project sessions. Senior Lecturer Jeff Bussgang will lead a series of case discussions that explore execution challenges before and after a startup achieves product-market fit, i.e., a match between its product solution and market needs. Topics explored in the cases include: 1) the importance of launching early and conducting experiments using a minimum viable product (MVP), i.e., the smallest set of features necessary to rapidly validate a hypothesis about a new venture based on customer feedback obtained through A/B tests, interviews, usability tests, customer support interactions, etc.; 2) the use of metrics to gauge whether hypotheses have been validated, e.g., viral coefficients, customer retention rates, unit economics; 3) the process of pivoting, i.e., modifying a product/business model based on market feedback; and 4) challenges in "crossing the chasm" from early adopters to mainstream customers; 5) challenges in scaling a direct sales force; 6) tradeoffs for startups relying on business development partnerships with large companies; and 7) why, when and how startups should introduce formal product management processes, e.g., project prioritization and tracking systems, product roadmaps.

A project session in Batten Hall will entail a team exercise supervised by Senior Lecturer Bussgang. Through this exercise, a team of students will specify, for one team member's startup idea, business model assumptions and rigorous tests to validate those assumptions, leveraging tools and techniques covered in the LTV's case sessions. Students will present their projects at the end of the term and draft a short essay, optionally published on the LTV course blog, about what they learned.

Awards & Honors
Named one of Boston Magazine's The 30 Most Disruptive People in Boston Tech.
Named one of Boston's 50 Most Powerful People by Boston Magazine in 2015.
Honored as The Civic Tech Innovator of the Year in 2015 by Civic Tech Challenge and Generation Citizen.
Co-winner of the 2015 Barry Shrage Community Builder Award from the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.
Named one of Boston Magazine's Most Powerful Idea People in 2014.
Named one of Mashable's Top 15 People Shaping Boston's Tech Scene.
Named a 2014 “Venture Capitalist Power Player in Digital Media” by AlwaysOn.
Named a 2014 "Venture Capitalist" Power Player in Digital Media by AlwaysOn.
Named one of Boston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 in 2006.
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