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- February 2021
- Case
SafeGraph: Selling Data as a Service
By: Ramana Nanda, Abhishek Nagaraj and Allison Ciechanover
Set in January 2021, the CEO of SafeGraph, a four-year-old startup that sold Data as a Service, looked to the future. His aim was to become the most trusted source for data about a physical place. The company provided points of interest (POI) and foot traffic data on...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Biased Sampling of Early Users and the Direction of Startup Innovation
By: Ruiqing Cao, Rembrand Koning and Ramana Nanda
Using data from a prominent online platform for launching new digital products, we document that the composition of the platform's ‘beta testers’ on the day a new product is launched has a systematic and persistent impact on the venture's success. Specifically, we use...
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- September 2020 (Revised December 2020)
- Technical Note
Impact Investment, Catalytic Capital and Blended Finance
- Summer 2020
- Article
Venture Capital's Role in Financing Innovation: What We Know and How Much We Still Need to Learn
By: Josh Lerner and Ramana Nanda
Venture capital is associated with some of the most high-growth and influential firms in the world. Academics and practitioners have effectively articulated the strengths of the venture model. At the same time, venture capital financing also has real limitations in its...
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- July 2020
- Article
The Persistent Effect of Initial Success: Evidence from Venture Capital
By: Ramana Nanda, Sampsa Samila and Olav Sorenson
We use investment-level data to study performance persistence in venture capital (VC). Consistent with prior studies, we find that each additional IPO among a VC firm's first ten investments predicts as much as an 8% higher IPO rate on its subsequent investments,...
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Keywords:
Performance;
Monitoring;
Selection;
Status;
Venture Capital;
Performance Consistency;
Investment
- 2020
- Working Paper
The Evolution of CEO Compensation in Venture Capital Backed Startups
By: Michael Ewens, Ramana Nanda and Christopher Stanton
We document new facts on the evolution of founder-CEO compensation in venture capital-backed startups. Having a tangible product (“product market fit”) is a fundamental milestone in CEOs’ compensation, marking the point where liquid cash compensation increases...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Financial Distancing: How Venture Capital Follows the Economy Down and Curtails Innovation
By: Sabrina T. Howell, Josh Lerner, Ramana Nanda and Richard Townsend
Although late-stage venture capital (VC) activity did not change dramatically in the first two months after the COVID-19 pandemic reached the U.S., early-stage VC activity declined by 38%. The particular sensitivity of early-stage VC investment to market...
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- February 2020 (Revised March 2020)
- Case
Prime Coalition: Catalytic Capital for Climate Innovation
By: Ramana Nanda, Benjamin N. Roth and Olivia Hull
With long development timelines and high risk, new energy technologies were often left to languish in the “valley of death,” unable to raise enough funds to bring a product to market. In 2014, Sarah Kearney founded the nonprofit Prime Coalition to solve this problem....
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Keywords:
Energy Conservation;
Renewable Energy;
Social Entrepreneurship;
Venture Capital;
Investment;
Innovation and Invention;
Technological Innovation;
Mission and Purpose;
Science-Based Business;
Nonprofit Organizations;
Social Enterprise;
Energy Industry;
Technology Industry;
Green Technology Industry;
United States
- October 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
NewView Capital and Venture Capital Secondaries
By: Shai Bernstein, Ramana Nanda and Allison Ciechanover
While still a general partner at Silicon Valley–based New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Ravi Viswanathan considered the challenges presented by evolving market dynamics in the venture capital space. Startups were staying private longer, which led to limited partners...
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- 2019
- Chapter
Coordination Frictions in Venture Capital Syndicates
By: Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
An extensive literature on venture capital has studied asymmetric information and agency problems between investors and entrepreneurs, examining how separating entrepreneurs from the investor can create frictions that might inhibit the funding of good projects. It has...
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- 2019
- Working Paper
Infrastructure and Finance: Evidence from India's GQ Highway Network
By: Abhiman Das, Ejaz Ghani, Arti Grover, William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda
We use the construction of India's Golden Quadrangle (GQ) central highway network, together with comprehensive loan data drawn from the Reserve Bank of India, to investigate the interaction between infrastructure development and financial sector depth. We identify a...
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- June 2019
- Article
Financial Development and Technology Diffusion
By: Diego Comin and Ramana Nanda
We examine the extent to which financial market development impacts the diffusion of 16 major technologies, looking across 17 countries, from 1870 to 2000. We find that greater depth in financial markets leads to faster technology diffusion for more capital-intensive...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Networking Frictions in Venture Capital, and the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship
By: Sabrina T. Howell and Ramana Nanda
We find that male participants in Harvard Business School’s New Venture Competition who were randomly exposed to more VC investors on their panel were substantially more likely to start a VC-backed startup post-graduation, indicating that access to investors impacts...
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- April 2019
- Technical Note
A Note on Boards in VC-Backed Ventures
What is the value of a Board, and why does a company need one? The note documents the formal role of a Board of Directors as going beyond simply acting as legal representation of corporate ownership. Moreover, this role changes as the company moves through different...
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- April 2019
- Teaching Note
Chai Point: Disrupting Chai
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Ramana Nanda, Rachna Tahilyani and Shweta Bagai
Teaching Note for HBS No. 818-020.
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- November 2018 (Revised December 2020)
- Technical Note
Initial Coin Offerings in 2018
In 2018, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) were an emerging fundraising method for blockchain-based projects. As the ecosystem grew, there were many open questions on regulation, pricing, and even which projects were a good fit for blockchain. However, there was already...
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- Article
The Hidden Costs of Initial Coin Offerings
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Ramana Nanda
In recent years, much has been written about how the Blockchain is poised to transform traditional industries such as banking, real estate, and healthcare. More recently, it has gained attention as a way to finance new ventures, through what is known as an Initial Coin...
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- November 2018 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
CleanWater, Inc.: Running Dry & Out of Time
By: Ramana Nanda, Robert F. White, Shai Bernstein and James Barnett
- October 2018
- Case
Accomplice: Scaling Early Stage Finance
By: Ramana Nanda, Raffaella Sadun and Olivia Hull
Accomplice, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Boston, is raising its second fund in November 2017. Since 2009, the firm has followed a seed-led investment model, investing in tech companies at the earliest stages, often when products and business models are...
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Keywords:
Early Stage Finance;
Seed Finance;
Scouts;
Venture Capital;
Business Startups;
Private Equity;
Investment Portfolio;
Organizational Structure;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Partners and Partnerships;
Networks;
Adaptation;
Corporate Strategy;
Technology;
Financial Services Industry;
Massachusetts;
Boston;
Cambridge;
United States