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- 2021
- Working Paper
Judging Foreign Startups
Can accelerators and investors pick the most promising startup ideas no matter their provenance? We investigate this question using unique data from a global accelerator in which judges across international regions are randomly assigned to evaluate startups...
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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
- Case
Lidya: Bringing Nigerian FinTech Innovation to Global Small and Medium Enterprises
By: Lauren Cohen and Spencer C.N. Hagist
Lidya CEO Tunde Kehinde must size up options for the expansion of his novel lending practices that drastically reduce the credit cycle in his developing Nigeria, and determine if expansion into Eastern Europe will prove successful or disastrous.
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- February 2021
- Case
China Rapid Finance: The Collapse of China’s P2P Lending Industry
By: William C. Kirby, Bonnie Yining Cao and John P. McHugh
China’s peer-to-peer (P2P) lending industry had over 3,000 platforms at its height in 2015. China Risk Finance (CRF) was one of the country’s P2P success stories. With over 1 million borrowers using CRF’s platform, it raised $60 million in its 2016 IPO on the New York...
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- February 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Equity Bank: Challenging a Giant
By: Lauren Cohen, Michael Chitavi and Spencer C. N. Hagist
Equity Bank and CEO Dr. James Mwangi must find a way to advance from their hard-fought ascension to second largest bank in Kenya by toppling financial giant Safaricom. Doing so means developing a new strategy and tackling technological frontiers no institution in the...
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- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Juno (A): Leveraging Student Power
By: Joshua Schwartzstein, Kathleen L. McGinn and Amy Klopfenstein
In March 2020, Chris Abkarians and Nikhil Agarwal were in the midst of preparing the annual auction for their student loan assistance startup, Juno. Both current MBA students at Harvard Business School, the duo founded Juno in 2018 to leverage student bargaining power...
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Keywords:
Decision Making;
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Decisions;
Cost vs Benefits;
Education;
Higher Education;
Finance;
Borrowing and Debt;
Strategy;
Adaptation;
Alignment;
Negotiation;
Agreements and Arrangements;
Negotiation Participants;
Negotiation Process;
Negotiation Tactics;
Negotiation Deal;
Negotiation Offer;
Negotiation Types;
Financial Services Industry;
Education Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
Massachusetts;
Boston
- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Supplement
Juno (B): Leveraging Student Power
By: Joshua Schwartzstein, Kathleen L. McGinn and Amy Klopfenstein
In March 2020, Juno co-founders Chris Abkarians and Nikhil Agarwal decided to pitch banks in anticipation of their annual auction while negotiating directly with private lender Eager. Responses from the majority of private lenders—including Juno’s 2019 partner—were not...
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Keywords:
Decision Making;
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Decisions;
Cost vs Benefits;
Judgments;
Education;
Higher Education;
Finance;
Borrowing and Debt;
Strategy;
Adaptation;
Alignment;
Negotiation;
Negotiation Deal;
Negotiation Offer;
Negotiation Participants;
Negotiation Process;
Negotiation Types;
Financial Services Industry;
Education Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
Massachusetts;
Boston
- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Supplement
Juno (C): Leveraging Student Power
By: Joshua Schwartzstein, Kathleen L. McGinn and Amy Klopfenstein
In May 2020, Juno co-founders Chris Abkarians and Nikhil Agarwal decided to hold the annual auction for their student loan assistance startup. Five lenders submitted bids, and the co-founders ultimately opted to select Eager Bank as their partner for the 2020-2021...
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Keywords:
Decision Making;
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Decisions;
Cost vs Benefits;
Judgments;
Education;
Higher Education;
Finance;
Borrowing and Debt;
Strategy;
Adaptation;
Alignment;
Negotiation;
Agreements and Arrangements;
Negotiation Deal;
Negotiation Offer;
Negotiation Participants;
Negotiation Process;
Negotiation Tactics;
Negotiation Types;
Financial Services Industry;
Education Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
Massachusetts;
Boston
- Editorial
Why ESG Funds Fail to Scale
By: Gabriel Karageorgiou and George Serafeim
You’ve seen the headlines about the growth in environmental, social, and governance funds. Many investment professionals might read these and believe that launching a new ESG investment firm or ESG offering will be an automatic success. Our analysis of the data shows...
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Keywords:
Esg;
Esg (environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
Esg Disclosure;
Esg Disclosure Metrics;
Esg Ratings;
Esg Reporting;
Investment Management;
Investment Strategy;
Investments;
Investment Fund;
Sustainability;
Sustainable Finance;
Sustainable Investing;
Investment;
Management;
Strategy;
Investment Portfolio;
Finance;
Growth and Development;
Failure
- January 2021
- Case
The FIRE Savings Calculator
By: Michael Parzen and Paul J. Hamilton
This case follows Carol Muñoz, a member of the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) lifestyle movement. At the age of 45, Carol is considering retiring and living off the $1 million she has accumulated. Using Monte Carlo simulation, Carol forecasts the...
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- January 2021
- Supplement
A Half-Deal
By: Marco Di Maggio, Pedro Levindo and Carla Larangeira
In June 2020, XP and Itaú faced intensified competition and tension in their partnership, with the latter owning a minority stake at XP. Two years earlier, in May 2017, Itaú had announced it would acquire 49.9% of XP for $1.8 billion, followed by three additional...
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- December 2020
- Teaching Note
Forecasting ClimaCell
By: Joshua Lev Krieger, Christopher Stanton and James Barnett
A weather technology startup, ClimaCell considers the R&D trade-offs and financing implications of pursuing a proposed contract with a major automobile maker, rather than continuing its focus on building a scalable, all-purpose weather prediction engine.
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- December 2020 (Revised January 2021)
- Case
Arcos Dorados: A QSR Recovery Plan
By: Forest Reinhardt, Jose B. Alvarez, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Mariana Cal
Arcos Dorados—McDonald’s largest independent franchisee, covering Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)—faced a pandemic that was disrupting the entire consumer foodservice business in 2020. With the exclusive right to own, operate, and sub-franchise McDonald’s...
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Keywords:
Agribusiness;
Animal-Based Agribusiness;
Plant-Based Agribusiness;
Customer Value and Value Chain;
Income;
Macroeconomics;
Environmental Management;
Environmental Sustainability;
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues;
Food;
Health Pandemics;
Crisis Management;
Logistics;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Strategic Planning;
Food and Beverage Industry;
Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry;
Retail Industry;
Latin America;
Aruba;
Guadeloupe;
Martinique;
Mexico;
Panama;
Costa Rica;
Argentina;
Brazil;
Chile;
Colombia;
Ecuador;
French Guiana;
Peru;
Uruguay;
Venezuela;
Puerto Rico;
Trinidad and Tobago
- 2020
- Working Paper
Accounting for Product Impact in the Consumer Finance Industry
By: George Serafeim and Katie Trinh
We apply the product impact measurement framework of the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative (IWAI) in two competitor credit card providers within the consumer finance industry. We design a monetization methodology that allows us to calculate monetary impact estimates...
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Keywords:
Product Innovation;
Impact;
Impact Investing;
Impact Measurement;
Esg;
Esg (environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
Esg Ratings;
Social Corporate Responsibility;
Corporate Social Responsibility;
Social Impact;
Consumer Finance;
Financial Services;
Financial Inclusion;
Product;
Product Design;
Product Positioning;
Society;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Personal Finance;
Credit Cards;
Financial Services Industry
- November 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
Roll-Ups and Surprise Billing: Collisions at the Intersection of Private Equity and Patient Care
By: Trevor Fetter and Kira Seiger
This case describes the increasing investment by private equity (PE) firms in patient care and other healthcare services. The case focuses on investments in physician staffing firms and roll-up strategy investments in physician practice management (PPM). Included in...
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Keywords:
Business Ventures;
Acquisition;
Mergers and Acquisitions;
Business Model;
Change;
Disruption;
Fluctuation;
Trends;
Customers;
Customer Value and Value Chain;
Ethics;
Fairness;
Finance;
Equity;
Insurance;
Private Equity;
Geography;
Geographic Scope;
Health;
Health Care and Treatment;
Markets;
Demand and Consumers;
Supply and Industry;
Industry Structures;
Ownership;
Ownership Type;
Private Ownership;
Relationships;
Agency Theory;
Business and Community Relations;
Business and Shareholder Relations;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Networks;
Strategy;
Competition;
Consolidation;
Expansion;
Integration;
Horizontal Integration;
Vertical Integration;
Value;
Value Creation;
Health Industry;
Insurance Industry;
United States
- October 2020 (Revised December 2020)
- Case
AfricInvest: A Pan-African Investment Platform
By: Victoria Ivashina and Youssef Abdel Aal
The case is set in December 2018, when Ziad Oueslati, co-managing director and co-founder of AfricInvest, a leading pan-African private equity firm headquartered in Tunisia, was reflecting on the future direction of his firm. AfricInvest started as a traditional small...
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- October 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
Wilderness Safaris: Impact Investing and Ecotourism Conservation in Africa
By: James E. Austin, Megan Epler Wood and Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard
In 2018 the majority ownership of publicly owned Wilderness Safaris, the leading high-end ecotourism company in Africa with safari operations in eight countries, was acquired by The Rise Fund, one of the world’s largest private social impact investing funds, and by FS...
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Keywords:
Investing;
Investing For Impact;
Ecotourism;
Covid-19;
Equity Financing;
Strategy Formulation;
Profitability;
Environmental And Social Sustainability;
Sustainability;
Conservation Planning;
Corporate Social Responsibility;
Investment;
Social Enterprise;
Social Entrepreneurship;
Environmental Sustainability;
Strategy;
Financing and Loans;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Health Pandemics;
Tourism Industry;
Africa;
Rwanda;
Angola
- October 2020
- Case
LifeBank Nigeria
By: Brian Trelstad, Pippa Tubman Armerding and Wale Lawal
The aspiration of addressing maternal deaths in Nigeria, which were mostly caused by blood shortages, led Temie Giwa-Tubosun to found LifeBank in 2015. LifeBank developed an online platform that enabled hospitals to connect and purchase blood from local blood banks and...
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- September 2020
- Case
Building India's 2.0: PayNearby
By: Lauren Cohen and Spencer C. N. Hagist
Headquartered in Mumbai, India, FinTech startup Nearby Technologies has seen its flagship brand, PayNearby, rapidly flourish across most of its target market within just four years. The unprecedented success of its payment app, which allows users to access banking...
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- September 2020
- Case
Disrupting Justice at RightNow: Persevere, Pivot or Perish
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Amir Reza Rezvani
The case examines the focus of an early stage company, and how an unexpected external incidence can threaten or void the business model. It encompasses issues such as defining and pivoting a business model, organizational requirements for a pivot, investor relations,...
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