Publications
Publications
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- Faculty Publications (883)
- July 2021
- Case
Bessemer Venture Partners: Century Fund
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
In July of 2021, Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) contemplated the future of its growth investing practice, known as “Century.” While still relatively new as a focused initiative, BVP’s growth investing already had significant momentum. The fund’s investment pace had... View Details
- July 2021 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Fynd
By: Ranjay Gulati, Kairavi Dey and Rachna Tahilyani
Fynd is a fast-growing venture that in 7 years since its founding has become India's largest omnichannel retail company with real-time access to over 9,000 stores' offline inventory. It started as a B2B business supporting retailers who didn’t have an online business,... View Details
- July 2021
- Teaching Plan
Scale and Scope at Drake Real Estate Partners
By: Christina R. Wing and David Lane
Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 621-065. View Details
- July–August 2021
- Article
SPACs: What You Need to Know
By: Max Bazerman and Paresh Patel
Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, have been around in various forms for decades, but during the past two years they’ve taken off in the United States. In 2019, 59 were created, with $13 billion invested; in 2020, 247 were created, with $80 billion... View Details
- June 2021
- Case
Building the Governance to Take Capital SAFI to the Next Level
By: V.G. Narayanan, Asis Martinez Jerez and Mariana Cal
Asset management firm Capital SAFI wanted to attract new strategic investors and expand to other countries. Having the right corporate governance in place was critical to achieve this goal. View Details
Keywords: Board Of Directors; Transparency; Sustainable Finance; South America; Latin America; Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Governing and Advisory Boards; Business Organization; Corporate Strategy; Transformation; Investment Funds; Financial Services Industry; Bolivia; South America; Latin America
- 2021
- Working Paper
Studying the U.S.-Based Portfolio Companies of U.S. Impact Investors
By: M. Diane Burton, Gurveen Chadha, Shawn A. Cole, Abhishek Dev, Christina Jarymowycz, Leslie Jeng, Laura Kelley, Josh Lerner, Jaime R. Diaz Palacios, Yue (Cynthia) Xu and T. Robert Zochowski
Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the reliance on market-based solutions to social and environmental problems around the world (Barman 2016; Horvath and Powell 2020). The growth of impact investing is a vivid example of this trend and, although there have... View Details
- June 2021
- Article
Short-Termism, Shareholder Payouts, and Investment in the EU
By: Jesse M. Fried and Charles C.Y. Wang
Investor-driven "short-termism" is said to harm EU public firms' ability to invest for the long term, prompting calls for the EU to better insulate managers from shareholder pressure. But the evidence offered—rising levels of repurchases and dividends—is incomplete and... View Details
- May 2021
- Case
Inclusive Innovation at Mass General Brigham
By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman and Olivia Hull
Massachusetts General Brigham (MGB) Chief Innovation Officer Christopher Coburn had overseen a period of exciting transformation and growth in healthcare innovation at MGB. In November 2019, the health system was the largest recipient of National Institutes of Health... View Details
Keywords: Inclusion; Innovation; Invention; Gender; Business Startups; Investment Funds; Private Equity; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Intellectual Property; Copyright; Patents; Research; Research and Development; Diversification; Technology; Health Industry; Massachusetts; Boston
- May 2021
- Teaching Plan
Gera Developments: Leadership at a Crossroads
By: Christina R. Wing and John Masko
Teaching Plan for HBS Case No. 621-018. For decades, Gera Developments (Gera) was a boutique family-owned real estate development firm in Pune, India. But since 2000, managing director Rohit Gera had turned the company into a dynamic innovator in housing solutions for... View Details
Keywords: Buildings and Facilities; Business Growth and Maturation; Construction; Geographic Location; Global Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Housing; Leadership Style; Management Succession; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Family Ownership; Family and Family Relationships; Urban Development; Customization and Personalization; Real Estate Industry; Maharashtra; India; San Francisco
- 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... View Details
- May 2021
- Article
Preparing for a Pandemic: Accelerating Vaccine Availability
By: Amrita Ahuja, Susan Athey, Arthur Baker, Eric Budish, Juan Camilo Castillo, Rachel Glennerster, Scott Duke Kominers, Michael Kremer, Jean Lee, Canice Prendergast, Christopher M. Snyder, Alex Tabarrok, Brandon Joel Tan and Witold Wiecek
Vaccinating the world’s population quickly in a pandemic has enormous health and economic benefits. We analyze the problem faced by governments in determining the scale and structure of procurement for vaccines. We analyze alternative approaches to procurement, arguing... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
The Dance Between Government and Private Investors: Public Entrepreneurial Finance around the Globe
By: Jessica Bai, Shai Bernstein, Abhishek Dev and Josh Lerner
This paper examines the interaction between governments and private capital investors when financing early-stage ventures. We first provide a simple conceptual framework to explore when collaboration between governments and private investors is likely to emerge. Using... View Details
- Article
Ten Year Sunset Rule for Healthcare Regulation Is a Nonstarter and Discouragement to Post-COVID-19 Investment
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Eugene Schneller
U.S. healthcare delivery has not benefitted from the same productivity growth as many other service industries, such as bricks and mortar retailing, a loss that has gravely diminished cost control and access. Regulatory capture, which creates barriers to venture... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Venture Capital's 'Me Too' Moment
By: Sophie Calder-Wang, Paul A. Gompers and Patrick Sweeney
In this paper, we document the historically low rate of hiring of women in the venture capital sector. We find that the high-profile Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins gender discrimination trial had dramatic treatment effects. In difference-in-differences regressions, we... View Details
- March 2021 (Revised June 2021)
- Case
Scale and Scope at Drake Real Estate Partners
By: Christina R. Wing and David Lane
Realizing in early 2021 that their pending real estate investment fund would likely be oversubscribed, Drake Real Estate Partners co-founders Nicolás Ibáñez and David Cotterman were considering how best to continue to diversify their investor base and how to optimize... View Details
- March 2021 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
Blue Meridian Partners (A): Scaling for Impact
In 2018, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in a bold move transferred all its assets to a fund pooled with other General Partners and Limited Partners, called Blue Meridian Partners, to focus substantial long range investments in a few carefully chosen nonprofits.The... View Details
- March 2021
- Case
Yale Investments Office: November 2020
By: Josh Lerner, Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
David Swensen and the Investments Office staff must decide whether to continue to allocate the bulk of the university's endowment to illiquid investments—hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, real estate, natural resources—given the impact of the COVID-19... View Details
Keywords: University Endowment; Asset Allocation; Real Estate; Equities; Fixed Income; COVID-19; Asset Management; Private Equity; Venture Capital; Natural Resources; Resource Allocation; Investment; Investment Portfolio; Health Pandemics; Financial Crisis; Financial Services Industry; Real Estate Industry; Energy Industry; Connecticut
- March 2021
- Case
Founders Factory
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and James Barnett
In January 2020, Founders Factory (FF) Executive Chairman Brent Hoberman and CEO Henry Lane Fox were considering FF’s expansion strategy. FF operated as a venture capital (VC) fund built around an accelerator and incubator, and organized around sectors within... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Markets; Planning; Expansion; Global Range; Business Model; Talent and Talent Management; Experience and Expertise; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Global Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Teams; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Partners and Partnerships; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Technology Industry; Africa; South Africa; Johannesburg; Europe; France; Paris; United Kingdom; England; London; United States; New York (city, NY)
- 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... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
Collab Capital
Founded in 2020 by Jewel Burks Solomon and her partners, Barry Givens and Justin Dawkins, Collab Capital was a new investment firm built on two pillars: first, it would identify and support ventures founded by Black entrepreneurs, a group underrepresented in... View Details