Publications
Publications
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- Faculty Publications (148)
- 2014
- Working Paper
Entrepreneurship as Experimentation
By: William R. Kerr, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
Entrepreneurship research is on the rise but many questions about its fundamental nature still exist. We argue that entrepreneurship is about experimentation: the probabilities of success are low, extremely skewed and unknowable until an investment is made. At a macro... View Details
- Article
Entrepreneurship as Experimentation
By: William R. Kerr, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
Entrepreneurship research is on the rise, but many questions about its fundamental nature still exist. We argue that entrepreneurship is about experimentation: the probabilities of success are low, extremely skewed, and unknowable until an investment is made. At a... View Details
- Article
Seeking the Roots of Entrepreneurship: Insights from Behavioral Economics
By: Thomas Astebro, Holger Herz, Ramana Nanda and Roberto A. Weber
There is a growing body of evidence that many entrepreneurs seem to enter and persist in entrepreneurship despite earning low risk-adjusted returns. This has lead to attempts to provide explanations—using both standard economic theory and behavioral economics—for why... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Wisdom or Madness? Comparing Crowds with Expert Evaluation in Funding the Arts
By: Ethan Mollick and Ramana Nanda
In fields as diverse as technology entrepreneurship and the arts, crowds of interested stakeholders are increasingly responsible for deciding which innovations to fund, a privilege that was previously reserved for a few experts, such as venture capitalists and... View Details
- March 2014
- Technical Note
Venture Capital Investment in the Clean Energy Sector
By: Ramana Nanda and Shikhar Ghosh
In this note, we examine the extent to which venture capital is adequately positioned for the rapid commercialization of clean energy technologies in the United States. The need for a revolution in clean energy is driven not just by environmental consequences of energy... View Details
- February 2014
- Teaching Plan
Endeavor: Miami Heats Up
By: William A. Sahlman, Ramana Nanda, David Lane and Lisa Mazzanti
- November 2013 (Revised December 2013)
- Case
Endeavor: Miami Heats Up
By: William A. Sahlman, Ramana Nanda, David Lane and Lisa Mazzanti
Endeavor Global was a nonprofit that for 15 years had worked to nurture entrepreneurship in emerging markets by selecting local high-impact entrepreneurs for mentoring and aid in scaling up their businesses from committed local business leaders. In summer 2012,... View Details
Keywords: Social Enterprise; Entrepreneurs; Scaling; Emerging Market Entrepreneurship; Not For Profit; Entrepreneurial Finance; Mentoring; Business Networks; Hybrid Nonprofit Funding; Mission and Purpose; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Entrepreneurship; Emerging Markets; Problems and Challenges; Finance; Miami
- November 2013
- Article
Investment Cycles and Startup Innovation
By: Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
We find that VC-backed firms receiving their initial investment in hot markets are more likely to go bankrupt, but conditional on going public are valued higher on the day of their IPO, have more patents, and have more citations to their patents. Our results suggest... View Details
- October 2013 (Revised August 2016)
- Case
NOWaccount
By: Ramana Nanda, William A. Sahlman and Lauren Barley
It was September 2013, and NOWaccount Network Corporation (NOW®) co-founders John Hayes and Lara Hodgson were putting the final touches on the presentation deck for their annual shareholders' meeting. Along with co-founder Stacey Abrams, the pair had designed NOW's... View Details
- October 2013 (Revised April 2018)
- Technical Note
Non-Equity Financing for Entrepreneurial Ventures
By: Joan Farre-Mensa, Ramana Nanda and Piyush Jain
Young, and particularly high-growth ventures often need to raise significant external finance, since their internal cash flow is usually insufficient to support the investments needed to grow. Although raising equity from venture capital or angel investors is the... View Details
- September 2013 (Revised November 2013)
- Case
AngelList
By: Ramana Nanda and Liz Kind
In early 2010, Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi posted a list of angel investors on the Venture Hacks blog as a resource for founders looking for funding prior to seeking venture capital. The list quickly evolved into AngelList, a separate matchmaking platform for... View Details
- May 2013 (Revised June 2014)
- Case
Getit
By: Ramana Nanda and Rachna Tahilyani
Sidharth Gupta, CEO of Getit Infomediary Ltd, had just received a term sheet from Helion Venture Partners (Helion), one of India's independent venture capital firms, offering to invest Rs 200 million in return for an equity stake in the company. His dream of... View Details
- 5 Feb 2013
- Conference Presentation
Financing Entrepreneurial Growth
By: Tom Alberg, Andrew A. Bogan, Harold Bradley, Robert D. Cooter, Monika Gruter Cheney, Oliver R. Goodenough, William R. Hambrecht, Frank Hatheway, Thomas F. Hellmann, Marianne Hudson, Jared Konczal, Josh Lerner, Robert E. Litan, Diane Mulcahy, Ramana Nanda, Frank Partnoy, Joe Ratterman, Nava Ravikant, Jay R. Ritter, Alicia Robb, David T. Robinson, Allison Schrager, Barry Silbert, E. R. Sirri, Daniel Stangler and Sharon Vosmek
Despite recent innovations in entrepreneurial finance, particularly at the early stage of business creation, many new and young companies continue to face hurdles to acquire capital.
The Kauffman Foundation addressed current challenges and opportunities in... View Details
- January 2013
- Teaching Note
INNOVA-MEX's Bid for ENKONTROL (TN)
By: William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda
In their second year, two Mexican HBS MBAs joined forces to start a search fund based in Mexico City. They had raised money to acquire an existing private company in Mexico with an initial enterprise value between $5 million and $15 million. Just seven months after... View Details
- November 2012 (Revised December 2017)
- Case
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... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Innovation Policies
By: Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
Past work has shown that failure tolerance by principals has the potential to stimulate innovation, but has not examined how this affects which projects principals will start. We demonstrate that failure tolerance has an equilibrium price ― in terms of an investor's... View Details
- September 2012 (Revised September 2016)
- Background Note
Convertible Notes in Seed Financings
This note introduces convertible notes in angel financing. It begins by delineating the differences between a priced and non-priced round. It then describes a specific example of a convertible note, with attention paid to technical details regarding valuation caps. View Details