Faculty & Research
Faculty & Research
11
Results
- November 2021 (Revised May 2022)
- Case
QuantumScape's Mission to Revolutionize Energy Storage for a Sustainable Future
By: William A. Sahlman, Allison M. Ciechanover and Jeff Huizinga
| QuantumScape CEO Jagdeep Singh juggles the many activities required to lead the next-generation battery pioneer. Founded in 2010, QuantumScape’s mission was to develop new “solid-state” car batteries that would improve upon traditional lithium-ion batteries in key... |
- October 2021 (Revised January 2022)
- Case
Chia Network: Reimagining Programmable Money
By: William A. Sahlman and George Gonzalez
| Chia Network developed a novel blockchain platform that was more eco-friendly, decentralized, and scalable than Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other blockchains. Now, company leadership must decide how to scale the startup and prioritize various partnerships, use cases, and... |
- October 2020
- Case
1366 Technologies: Surviving in a fast changing world
By: Jurgen Weiss, William A. Sahlman and Joseph B. Lassiter III
- November 2016 (Revised May 2017)
- Case
Hyperloop One
| This case explores the attempt of Shervin Pishevar, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, to shepherd hyperloop, a futuristic pod-in-tube transportation technology, from concept to transformative reality via Hyperloop One and Sherpa Capital, both companies he... |
- November 2015
- Case
Rubicon Global
By: William A. Sahlman and Hunter Ashmore
| The case describes Rubicon Global, a startup that aimed to disrupt the waste management industry. The company started with a bold idea: create a cloud-based, full-service waste management company providing low-cost, highly efficient, and environmentally friendly... |
- October 2015 (Revised January 2017)
- Case
UPower Technologies Inc.
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and Liz Kind
| The UPower founders, Jake DeWitte and Caroline Cochran, were recent graduates from MIT's Nuclear Science and Engineering Department. They chose to attend Palo Alto–based Y Combinator's accelerator program to focus on building a "mini" nuclear reactor that would produce... |
- November 2014
- Case
Oasys Water: Balancing Strategic Partnerships & Financing Decisions
By: Ramana Nanda, William A. Sahlman and Sid Misra
| Oasys Water had developed a proprietary water treatment technology based on an innovative forward osmosis process that could remove dissolved solids from water more effectively and efficiently than existing technologies. As Oasys looked to scale, it was exploring... |
- November 2012 (Revised December 2017)
- Cases with Notes
TerraPower
| John Gilleland, CEO of TerraPower, returned to his office after a lengthy meeting with potential investors. It was October 2012, and TerraPower was in the process of raising a $200M Series C round to finance the ongoing development of its next-generation nuclear... |
- October 2011 (Revised November 2011)
- Cases with Notes
Verengo Solar Plus!
By: William A. Sahlman, Joseph B. Lassiter III and Liz Kind
| In the three years since Bishop and Button purchased Verengo in a leveraged buyout (LBO), the company had gone through dramatic changes. Initially a residential windows and insulation firm, after the economic recession of 2008 the company switched gears and began... |
- September 2011 (Revised July 2012)
- Case
Khosla Ventures: Biofuels Gain Liquidity
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman, Alison Berkley Wagonfeld and Evan Richardson
| Samir Kaul, a Partner at Khosla Ventures, looked out his office window. It was late June, 2011, and like almost every day in Menlo Park, the sun was shining. Kaul was reflecting on what had been a very positive 10 months in the venture capital business. Over that span,... |
- September 2008 (Revised July 2012)
- Cases with Notes
Khosla Ventures: Biofuels Strategy
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
| By 2008, a number of the firm's early cleantech investments were showing promise, and the companies were starting to need significantly more money to create the massive scale required in the energy sector. As Khosla thought about the hundreds of millions of dollars... |