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Skip to Main Content Cold Call A podcast featuring faculty discussing cases they've written and the lessons they impart. Subscribe on iTunes 29 Sep...
- May 2021
- Article
Mutual Funds as Venture Capitalists? Evidence from Unicorns
By: Josh Lerner, Sergey Chernenko and Yao Zeng
The past decade saw the rise of both “founder-friendly” venture financings and non-traditional investors, frequently with liquidity constraints. Using detailed contract data, we study open-end mutual funds investing in private venture-backed firms. We posit an...
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- May–June 2021
- Article
Why Start-ups Fail
If you’re launching a business, the odds are against you: Two-thirds of start-ups never show a positive return. Unnerved by that statistic, a professor of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School set out to discover why. Based on interviews and surveys with hundreds...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Venture Capital Booms and Startup Financing
By: William Janeway, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
We review the growing literature on the relationship between venture capital booms and startup financing, focusing on three broad areas: First, we discuss the drivers of large inflows into the venture capital asset class, particularly in recent years—which are related...
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- April 2021
- Case
IBM: Design Thinking
By: Srikant M. Datar, Amram Migdal and Paul Hamilton
This case describes the 2012-2020 effort at IBM to implement design thinking throughout the company and hire thousands of designers to serve on every product team alongside technical engineers and developers and product managers. IBM’s design transformation is told...
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Keywords:
Business Ventures;
Business Divisions;
Business Units;
Business Organization;
Change;
Change Management;
Transformation;
Competency and Skills;
Talent and Talent Management;
Design;
Human Resources;
Recruitment;
Selection and Staffing;
Innovation and Invention;
Collaborative Innovation and Invention;
Innovation and Management;
Innovation Strategy;
Jobs and Positions;
Job Design and Levels;
Leading Change;
Management;
Business or Company Management;
Goals and Objectives;
Management Practices and Processes;
Operations;
Product;
Product Design;
Product Development;
Organizations;
Business Processes;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Organizational Design;
Organizational Structure;
Strategy;
Adaptation;
Adoption;
Technological Innovation;
Hardware;
Information Technology;
Technology Industry;
Information Technology Industry;
United States
- April 2021
- Case
Codecademy: Where to Next?
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Max Mailman and Sarah Ascherman
In March 2020, Zach Sims, co-founder and CEO of online education platform Codecademy, prepared for a meeting with Chief of Staff Kunal Ahuja to discuss the company’s goals. Codecademy billed itself as the largest online resource for improving computer science literacy...
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- March 2021
- Case
Astralis Group: Determining a Brand Strategy
By: Benjamin C. Esty, Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej and Emilie Billaud
After launching a Danish esports company in July 2019, and going public in December 2019 with multiple brands associated with different games, the Astralis leadership team was contemplating a shift to a single, corporate brand. While the original arguments for...
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Keywords:
Brand Strategy;
Esports;
Video Games;
Corporate Scope;
Positioning;
Ecosystem;
Brands and Branding;
Strategy;
Business Ventures;
Business Startups;
Entrepreneurship;
Ethics;
Sports;
Competitive Strategy;
Value Creation;
Diversification;
Games, Gaming, and Gambling;
Sports Industry;
Entertainment and Recreation Industry;
Denmark;
Europe
- March 2021
- Case
CashDrop (A)
By: Rembrand Koning, Paul A. Gompers and Sarah Gulick
In July 2020, Ruben Flores-Martinez had launched a startup, CashDrop, which provided easy and cheap sales options for small businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic helped CashDrop quickly grow. Flores-Martinez, who had previously sought and been denied venture capital...
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- March 2021
- Supplement
CashDrop (B2)
By: Rembrand Koning, Paul A. Gompers and Sarah Gulick
After the events in CashDrop A, Jarrid Tingle and Henri Pierre-Jacques, the founders of Harlem Capital partners, worried that Ruben Flores-Martinez, CashDrop’s founder, would take another offer while he waited for them to officially make an offer. HCP traditionally...
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- March 2021
- Supplement
CashDrop (B1)
By: Rembrand Koning, Paul A. Gompers and Sarah Gulick
After the events in CashDrop A, Flores-Martinez received two concrete offers from VC funds for his startup business, CashDrop. This case describes the tensions between the two funds: a traditional VC fund who would offer Flores-Martinez a prestigious platform, and a...
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- March 2021
- Teaching Plan
The Black New Venture Competition
Black entrepreneurs encounter many unique obstacles when raising capital to start and grow a business, some stemming from deep systemic discrimination. During their second year at Harvard Business School (HBS), MBA students Kimberly Foster and Tyler Simpson decided to...
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Keywords:
Analytics;
Startup;
Start-up;
Startup Financing;
Financing;
Startups;
Start-ups;
Business And Community;
Business And Society;
Business Growth;
Discrimination;
Women;
Women-owned Businesses;
African Americans;
African-american Entrepreneurs;
African-american Investors;
African-american Protagonist;
African-american Women;
Diversity;
Venture Capital;
Early Stage Funding;
Early Stage;
Technology;
Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship;
Innovation Competitions;
Entrepreneurship;
Entrepreneurial Financing;
Business Plan
- March–April 2021
- Article
How Venture Capitalists Make Decisions
By: Paul A. Gompers, Will Gornall, Steven Kaplan and Ilya Strebulaev
For decades now, venture capitalists have played a crucial role in the economy by financing high-growth start-ups. While the companies they’ve backed—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and more—are constantly in the headlines, very little is known about what VCs actually...
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- February 2021
- Teaching Plan
Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Amy Klopfenstein
This teaching plan serves as a supplement to the case “Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?” HBS 820-098. The case explores the tension between two different financing and expansion plans for a startup, and explores issues related to business model pivots and industry...
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Keywords:
Business Ventures;
Business Model;
Business Plan;
Business Startups;
Entrepreneurship;
Decision Making;
Decisions;
Judgments;
Ethics;
Geography;
Geopolitical Units;
Finance;
Investment;
Markets;
Market Entry and Exit;
Demand and Consumers;
Media;
Society;
Urban Development;
Sustainable Cities;
Technology;
Hardware;
Technology Platform;
Strategy;
Business Strategy;
Expansion;
Relationships;
Capital;
Venture Capital;
Advertising Industry;
Technology Industry;
Media and Broadcasting Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
Massachusetts;
Cambridge
- February 2021 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
World of Dreams Entertainment Group: Building a Resilient Business
By: Lynda M. Applegate, Sarah Endline and Michael Norris
In 2021, Ron DeShay, former American Idol producer, is launching his new business venture: World of Dreams Entertainment Group. World of Dreams rethought the existing TV production model, giving audiences more power to directly influence the creation of shows through a...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Whose Job Is It Anyway? Co-Ethnic Hiring in New U.S. Ventures
By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr
We explore co-ethnic hiring among new ventures using U.S. administrative data. Co-ethnic hiring is ubiquitous among immigrant groups, averaging about 22.5% and ranging from <2% to >40%. Co-ethnic hiring grows with the size of the local ethnic workforce, greater...
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Keywords:
Hiring;
Job Creation;
E-verify;
Immigration;
Selection and Staffing;
Ethnicity;
Entrepreneurship
- January 2021
- Case
Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years using a novel technology and data science. ...
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Keywords:
Business Ventures;
Business Strategy;
Competitive Advantage;
Disruption;
Entrepreneurship;
Environmental Sustainability;
Cash Flow;
Disruptive Innovation;
Innovation Strategy;
Brands and Branding;
Business Model;
Consumer Products Industry;
Food and Beverage Industry;
Service Industry;
United States;
California
- January 2021
- Supplement
Bespoken Spirits: Disrupting Distilling
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel Fisher
On October 7, 2020, Bespoken Spirits publicly announced it had received $2.6 million of seed funding for its “sustainable maturation process,” a process that could produce award-winning whiskeys in just days rather than years using a novel technology and data science. ...
View Details
Keywords:
Business Ventures;
Business Strategy;
Competitive Advantage;
Disruption;
Entrepreneurship;
Environmental Sustainability;
Cash Flow;
Disruptive Innovation;
Innovation Strategy;
Brands and Branding;
Business Model;
Consumer Products Industry;
Food and Beverage Industry;
Service Industry;
United States;
California
- Winter 2021
- Article
How Would-Be Category Kings Become Commoners
By: Rory McDonald and Keith Krach
Category creation is the holy grail in business, but more often than not, the very companies that establish lucrative new markets don’t end up being the category kings. Why? Many executives undermine their own ventures’ standing by misinterpreting and misfiring on...
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- January 2021
- Case
Biobot Analytics
In 2017, Newsha Ghaeli and Mariana Matus were deciding whether to leave their labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, put other job opportunities aside, and dive full-time into founding a wastewater analysis start-up, Biobot. Ghaeli, an architect, and Matus,...
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