Publications

28 Jun 2021
News

Caretaking Concierge Startup Raises $35 Million Series B

Keywords: healthcare; women founders; venture capital; entrepreneurship; Ambulatory Health Care Services; Health, Social Assistance

July 2022
Case

Bringing Ideas to Life: The Story of Paul English

By: Youngme Moon, Frances X. Frei and F. Katelynn Boland

Paul English is one of the most imaginative innovators of his generation. This case explores his process of creative idea generation. The case includes an exercise for students to generate value-creating ideas from scratch. View Details

Keywords: Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Idea Generation; Founder; Startup; Imagination; Innovation and Invention; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Creativity; Value Creation

Web

Visual Models for Climate Resiliency: SE Founder Sana Mojarradi (MBA 2025) | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

September 2019
Exercise

Difficult Conversations (A)

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai

The exercises can be used as a follow-up to the Yesware (A) case (#816-039), or in conjunction with any case that involves replacing a founding team member (and/or providing feedback to a top executive). This is a role-playing exercise, and has been carried out in the... View Details

Keywords: Firing; Feedback; Founders; Culture; Values; Neuroscience; Business Startups; Organizational Culture; Resignation and Termination; Communication; Emotions; Trust; Human Resources; Entrepreneurship

22 Dec 2022
Blog Post

Climate Stories Episode #13: Democratizing Climate Returns - Nisha Desai (HBS 1997), Founder and CEO of Invest With Intention

Climate Stories Episode #13 – Democratizing Climate Returns: Nisha Desai (HBS 1997) Founder and CEO of Invest With Intention “We’re democratizing impact investing, not just for impact, but for returns for individual consumers.” In the... View Details

01 Dec 2017
News

2017 in Retail: Voice-Activated, One-Hour-Delivery Shopping

Technology is changing everything about how we shop. Two decades ago when we needed something, we went to the store. That’s what we’d done for hundreds of years. Then we began to turn to the computer. Now shopping means reaching for our phones; today, over half of all... View Details

Keywords: Ron Johnson (MBA 1984), founder and CEO, Enjoy

August 2023 (Revised February 2024)
Case

DexAI

By: Jo Tango and Christina Wallace

During a challenging fundraising environment, the DexAI founders received two term sheets with nearly identical economic terms but very different legal ones. The entrepreneurs had to navigate: representations and warranties (their personal guarantees that the company's... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital Term Sheet; Term Sheet; Term Sheets; Founders; Legal Aspects Of Business; Seed Financing; Founders' Agreements; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Financing and Loans; Intellectual Property; Entrepreneurial Finance; Contracts; Business Startups; Agreements and Arrangements

June 2024
Case

Alignvest Student Housing: Keep Building or Time to Sell?

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Patrick Sanguineti

Sanjil Shah, Managing Partner of Alignvest Student Housing REIT (ASH), faces the most significant decision thus far in his career: is it the right time to sell the company? Together with his partner Reza Satchu, Shah had developed ASH into the largest student housing... View Details

Keywords: Exit Strategy; Real Estate; Founder; Equity Valuation; Decisions; Entrepreneurial Finance; Interest Rates; Health Pandemics; Housing; Partners and Partnerships; Expansion; Entrepreneurship; Business Exit or Shutdown; Canada

November 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Bridgit: Persevere or Pivot?

By: Reza Satchu and Patrick Sanguineti

In late 2012, Mallorie Brodie and Lauren Lake, two young women in their final year of college, founded Bridgit, a technology startup that developed solutions to simplify vital but laborious processes within the construction industry. In the Fall of 2013, after months... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneur; Founder; Co-founders; Women Executives; Pivot; Startup; Business Model; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Applications and Software; Product Launch; Research and Development; Competition; Construction Industry; Technology Industry; United States; Canada

April 2019
Technical Note

A Note on Boards in VC-Backed Ventures

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Ramana Nanda, Suraj Srinivasan and Terrence Shu

What is the value of a Board, and why does a company need one? The note documents the formal role of a Board of Directors as going beyond simply acting as legal representation of corporate ownership. Moreover, this role changes as the company moves through different... View Details

Keywords: Founders; Business Startup; Board; Board Of Directors; Business Startups; Governing and Advisory Boards; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship

25 Oct 2020
News

Google's founders have vanished as the company goes to war with Washington. It's yet another mess for Sundar Pichai to clean up.

24 Sep 2024
News

These Founders Had an 'Icky Feeling' as Their Startup Soared to a $12 Billion Valuation. Now They're Getting Raw and Honest About What Went Wrong.

February 2022 (Revised November 2022)
Case

Nuritas

By: Mitchell Weiss, Satish Tadikonda, Vincent Dessain and Emer Moloney

Nora Khaldi had built a technology “to unlock the power of nature” in the service of extending human lifespan and improving health, and now in April 2020 was debating telling her Board of Directors she wanted to put on ice some of her discoveries. Nuritas, the company... View Details

Keywords: Cash Burn; Cash Flow Analysis; Pharmaceutical Companies; Founder; Artificial Intelligence; AI; Entrepreneurship; Health Testing and Trials; Health Care and Treatment; Decision Making; Market Entry and Exit; AI and Machine Learning; Pharmaceutical Industry

01 Dec 2017
News

2017 in Health Care: Telemedicine Has Arrived

The technology behind telemedicine—health care delivered remotely and asynchronously—has been improving for years, but in 2017, the United States hit a tipping point. This year, Kaiser Permanente’s CEO announced that of the company’s 100 million–plus patient encounters... View Details

Keywords: Halle Tecco (MBA 2011), founder emeritus, Rock Health; angel investor; adjunct professor, Columbia Business School

February 2014 (Revised August 2016)
Case

Strava

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and Sid Misra

Strava is a new fast-growing social network for the avid cyclist and runner. The Strava case traces the entrepreneurial journey of two serial entrepreneurs who have been co-founders in a prior venture, and who have co-founded Strava 3 years ago. The protagonists must... View Details