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- May 2024
- Case
HarvEast
By: Jeremy Friedman and Natalie Kindred
In late 2023, Dmitry Skornyakov, CEO of Ukrainian agribusiness HarvEast, was navigating the turmoil caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that began in 2014 and escalated into full-scale war in February 2022. Before the full-scale invasion, HarvEast managed 127,000...
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Keywords:
Goods and Commodities;
Natural Resources;
Food;
Problems and Challenges;
Adaptation;
Innovation and Management;
Crisis Management;
Logistics;
Supply Chain;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Loss;
Trust;
Human Needs;
War;
Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry;
Chile;
South America;
Latin America;
Ukraine
- March 2024
- Case
East Rock Capital: 'Talent Is the Best Asset Class'
By: Boris Groysberg, Sarah L. Abbott and Izzy Yeoh
Adam Shapiro and Graham Duncan launched East Rock Capital, LLC in 2006 with a seed investment from Stuart Miller, executive chairman of Lennar Corporation. East Rock managed long-term assets for high-net-worth families, primarily working with external managers who had...
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- February 2024
- Case
Vespucci Partners: The New World of Venture Capital in Hungary
By: Paul A. Gompers, Tonia Labruyere and Emilie Billaud
Julia Sohajda was the young, female founding partner of the Hungarian VC firm Vespucci Partners, which focused on investing at seed stage into Hungarian deep tech startups and prepare them for a launch in the U.S market. Vespucci's first fund had largely been comprised...
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- November 2022 (Revised September 2023)
- Technical Note
SAFE Notes: An Introduction
By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui and Jo Tango
A SAFE ("Simple Agreement for Future Equity") is a security increasingly used in seed financings. Not equity or debt, SAFEs allow founders to "get capital now and sell equity later." This Technical Note covers: 1. What is a SAFE and why use one?, 2. The key concepts...
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- May 2022 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
Founder Collective
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
Founder Collective ("FC") launched in 2009 with a clear mission: to be the most aligned fund for founders at the seed stage. In keeping with its mission, FC maintained smaller fund sizes and was not a lifecycle investor. By November of 2021, the seed market had become...
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- April 2022
- Case
Pear Venture Capital
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
Keith Bender, Principal at Pear Venture Capital, is working over the weekend to prepare for a Monday morning investment meeting. He has three startup pitch decks in front of him, and he must choose one to recommend at the meeting. He finds that each company has its...
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- February 2022
- Case
NFX Capital and Moov Technologies
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Nicole Tempest Keller
In July 2019, James Currier, a general partner at San Francisco-based NFX Ventures, was considering a seed stage investment of $1.5 million in Moov Technologies, a B2B marketplace for used industrial equipment. NFX was a venture capital firm focused on seed-stage...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Anchors Aweigh: Analysis of Anchor Limited Partner Investors in Impact Investment Funds
By: Shawn A. Cole, T. Robert Zochowski, Fanele Mashwama and Heather McPherson
This note describes results from a survey of “anchor investors” in impact funds. Anchor investors
are described as “generally the first investor to make a substantial capital commitment to a fund,”
(according to the Global Impact Investing Network, “GIIN”) and their...
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- March 2020
- Case
Thingtesting: Launching a Brand Discovery and Testing Digital Community
By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery
Thingtesting, a brand discovery and testing digital community devoted to uncovering and exploring direct-to-consumer brands, had just received seed funding and was contemplating a second year of growth. The new year brought many challenges, as founder Jenny Gyllander...
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Keywords:
Influencer Marketing;
Monetization;
Female Ceo;
Female Entrepreneur;
Female Protagonist;
Influencers;
Influencer;
Direct-to-consumer;
Marketing;
Brands and Branding;
Marketing Strategy;
Venture Capital;
Entrepreneurship;
Marketing Communications;
Consumer Products Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
Advertising Industry;
London;
United Kingdom;
United States;
Europe;
North America
- April 2019 (Revised July 2019)
- Case
Aperture Investors
By: Krishna G. Palepu, George Serafeim and David Lane
Aperture Investors is a startup investment firm that seeks to disrupt the asset management industry through competitive differentiation by charging investors primarily when its portfolio managers outperform the marketplace. Headed by Wall Street veteran Peter Kraus and...
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- January 2019 (Revised March 2020)
- Case
Blackstone Alternative Asset Management in 2018
By: Emil Siriwardane, Luis M. Viceira and Shawn O'Brien
In early 2018, Blackstone announced that John McCormick would succeed Tom Hill as President and Chief Executive Officer of Blackstone Alternative Asset Management (BAAM), the largest fund-of-hedge funds in the world by a sizeable margin. As new CEO, McCormick must...
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- 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
- May 2018 (Revised October 2018)
- Case
Urban Us
By: Mitchell Weiss and Phoebe Peronto
Shaun Abrahamson and Stonly Baptiste aimed to invest in what they called "urbantech superheroes." At Urban Us, the seed-stage urban technology-focused venture capital firm the two started in 2012, they looked for startups innovating around the future of cities. By...
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- March 2018 (Revised March 2018)
- Teaching Note
OpenInvest
By: Boris Vallee and Caitlin Reimers Brumme
Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolio to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapon manufacturers stocks or overweighting LGBTQ...
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- February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
OpenInvest
By: Shawn Cole, Boris Vallée and Nicole Tempest Keller
Founded by a team of hedge fund and NGO alumni, OpenInvest launched its platform in 2015 to enable retail investors to tailor their portfolios to their personal values in an automated way, for instance by screening out weapons manufacturers stocks or overweighting...
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- January–February 2018
- Article
Inclusive Growth: Profitable Strategies for Tackling Poverty and Inequality
By: Robert S. Kaplan, George Serafeim and Eduardo Tugendhat
More than a billion people in the developing world remain in extreme poverty and outside the formal economy. Traditional CSR programs have done little to alleviate the situation and rarely produce transformative change.
Instead of trying to fix local problems,... View Details
Instead of trying to fix local problems,... View Details
Keywords:
Inclusive Growth;
Sustainability;
Social Impact;
Business Strategy;
Shared Value;
Impact Investing;
Inequality;
Corporate Governance;
Balanced Scorecard;
Strategy Execution;
Economic Growth;
Developing Countries and Economies;
Poverty;
Equality and Inequality;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Strategy;
Investment
- August 2016
- Teaching Note
The Role of Real Estate in Endowment Portfolios: The Case of Christ Church College
By: Arthur I. Segel and Alexander W. Schultz
The case centers on Christ Church’s Treasurer, James Lawrie, who is contemplating his options for investing a portion of the College’s endowment in real estate. Approximately 1/3 of the total $690 million endowment was allocated towards real estate, much higher than...
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- June 2016 (Revised February 2017)
- Case
The Role of Real Estate in Endowment Portfolios: The Case of Christ Church, Oxford
By: David Chambers, Elroy Dimson, Arthur I Segel and Eva Steiner
The case centers on Christ Church's Treasurer, James Lawrie, who is contemplating his options for investing a portion of the College's endowment in real estate. Approximately 1/3 of the total $690 million endowment was allocated towards real estate, much higher than...
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- February 2016 (Revised December 2016)
- Case
IMAX: Scaling Personalized Learning in India
By: John Jong-Hyun Kim, Michael Chu and Rachna Tahilyani
IMAX is a provider of comprehensive testing and personalized content across mid-range and low-cost private K-10 schools in India. It aims to improve learning outcomes by providing schools with an integrated product suite including textbooks, workbooks, assessments,...
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- 2015
- Case
Advanced Leadership Pathways: Robert Whelan and the Student Loan Crisis (B)
By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Grace Sza-Hua Chen and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone
Bob Whelan developed an idea with partners that was a seed before his fellowship year and addressed a significant national challenge - college financing - with a creative concept and experience from his years in investment banking. His nonprofit was called 13th Avenue...
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