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 two MBA Elective Curriculum courses: Launching Technology Ventures – a class focused on product-market fit startups -- and Scaling Minority Businesses – a field class focused on supporting Black and latinx business entrepreneurs. Additionally, he oversees the Rock Venture Partners program, a year-long seminar for aspiring venture capitalists.

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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 two MBA Elective Curriculum courses: Launching Technology Ventures – a class focused on product-market fit startups -- and Scaling Minority Businesses – a field class focused on supporting Black and latinx business entrepreneurs. Additionally, he 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
Bussgang’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 the MBA elective course Launching Technology Ventures and dozens of case studies, teaching notes and HBR articles on startups, startup management and scaling startups. Bussgang’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
Bussgang’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. He also researches how to achieve alignment between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

Minority Entrepreneurs
Bussgang’s work on studying the unique challenges and opportunities for minority entrepreneurs has resulted in numerous cases (e.g., Black New Venture Competition, Collab Capital) and the course Scaling Minority Businesses.

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
Launching Technology Ventures (LTV) is designed for students who are actively working on their own startups or who will work at early-stage startups. 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.

Extending concepts introduced in the MBA Required Curriculum course, The Entrepreneurial Manager, LTV explores in greater depth "lean startup" management practices and series of experiments that startups run to hone their value proposition, go to market strategy, and business model. LTV emphasizes implementation rather than strategy issues, including financing strategy and ethical issues facing founders.

Scaling Minority Businesses
Scaling Minority Businesses (SMB) is a field course designed to leverage the intellectual power and community of Harvard Business School to address the vital needs of Black-owned enterprises as they face the twin tasks of surviving and growing. The course utilizes three approaches to learning—traditional case-based classes, talks by subject experts, and hands-on consulting assignments with Black-owned businesses in the greater Boston-area. It will provide students with the opportunity to draw upon and strengthen their learnings from a range of RC courses including, but not limited to, TEM, Marketing, Strategy, and TOM. Students will receive hands-on experience wrestling with key issues in scaling a small business and will gain an understanding of the historic and systemic barriers to growth faced by Black businesses.

The arc of the course covers three modules: (1) Challenges of Systemic Racism and Inequities; (2) Challenges of Access to Capita; and (3) Challenges of Access to Customers.

The Rock Venture Partners
The Rock Venture Partners (RVP) program enables a small group of HBS 2nd year students to learn more about investing in startups by supporting Rock Accelerator teams as they go through the process of starting and pitching a venture. As part of the program, students evaluate and invest in Rock Accelerator startups, study and network with leaders of the venture capital industry, and participate in internships at venture capital firms.

Awards & Honors
Selected for Boston Magazine’s “The 100 Most Influential People in Boston Right Now” in 2020.
Included as one of the 21 Most Powerful People in Boston Business in Boston Magazine in 2017.
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 one of Boston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 in 2006.
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