Publications
Publications
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(2,081)
- Faculty Publications (496)
- November 2018
- Case
David Hysong and SHEPHERD Therapeutics
By: Ananth Raman, John Masko and Aldo Sesia
In 2016, David Hysong, at age 27, found out he had a rare, incurable cancer. Rather than wait around to die, Hysong, a recent graduate of Harvard Divinity School, decided to launch a biotechnology company called Shepherd Therapeutics to development treatments for his... View Details
- 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... View Details
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
- October 2018 (Revised February 2018)
- Case
Masayoshi Son and the Vision Fund
By: Tom Nicholas, Ramana Nanda and Benjamin N. Roth
In October 2016, SoftBank Group Corp., the Japanese conglomerate giant caused a significant shock to the worldwide market for venture capital and private equity by announcing the Vision Fund, the largest tech investment fund in the world at close to $100 billion. The... View Details
- September 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Teaching Note
Gemini Investors
By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld
Teaching Note for HBS No. 211-066. Gemini Investors was a private equity firm that targeted equity investments of between $4 million to $6 million per firm. In the period from 2000 to 2015, Gemini had successfully deployed four funds, all licensed as Small Business... View Details
- September 2018
- Case
Clayton, Dubilier & Rice at 40
By: Josh Lerner, Abhijit Tagade and Terrence Shu
In 2018, private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice celebrated its 40th anniversary and its 20th year under the leadership of CEO Don Gogel. In those decades, CD&R showed solid portfolio performance and generated strong returns for its investors - accomplishments... View Details
- September 2018 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS: Selecting Impact Funds
By: Vikram Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Nathaniel Schwalb
After much internal debate, THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS of Denmark have decided to allocate a small percentage of their investment portfolio to impact investments. Cambridge Associates, one of the leading investment advisory firms in the world, has been engaged to assist... View Details
- July 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Teaching Note
MC Tool
By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld
Sean Witty and Jason Premo acquired MC Tool, a machine shop located in South Carolina in 2007 with the intent to transform it into a precision manufacturer. Witty and Premo were able to more than double revenue to $6 million in their first year of managing MC by... View Details
- July 2018 (Revised January 2021)
- Case
RunKeeper
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
The case examines the focus of an early stage company and how venture capital can distort a founder’s view. It encompasses issues such as financing, understanding the founders’ definition of success/failure, defining and pivoting a business model, and determining the... View Details
- July–August 2018
- Article
The Other Diversity Dividend
By: Paul Gompers and Silpa Kovvali
Researchers have struggled to establish a causal relationship between diversity and financial performance—especially at large companies, where decision rights and incentives can be murky, and the effects of any given choice can be tough to pin down. So the authors... View Details
- June 2018 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
Valuing Snap After the IPO Quiet Period (A)
By: Marco Di Maggio, Benjamin C. Esty and Gregory Saldutte
Snap, the disappearing message app, went public at $17 per share on March 2, 2017, making its two 20-something founders the youngest self-made billionaires in the country. Over the next three weeks, 14 analysts made investment recommendations on Snap: two with buy... View Details
Keywords: Sell-side Analysts; Underwriters; Investment Banking; Social Network; Discounted Cash Flow; Cost Of Capital; Conflicts Of Interest; Corporate Governance; Advertising; Quiet Period; ＂DCF Valuation,＂; Business Startups; Digital Marketing; Initial Public Offering; Information Infrastructure; Valuation; Venture Capital; Forecasting and Prediction; Social Media; Advertising Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Web Services Industry; United States; California
- May 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Teaching Note
Nashton Partners and Its Search Fund Process
By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld
Teaching Note for HBS No. 212-006. In 2008, Jay Davis (HBS’ 08) and Jason Pananos (HBS’ 08) formed Nashton Partners and raised $500,000 from investors to fund their search. After 30 months of searching, and exhausting the money they raised to fund their search, Davis... View Details
- April 2018
- Case
Hawk Electronics, Inc.
By: Richard G. Hamermesh and John J. Lafkas
Hawk Electronics ("Hawk") presents the problems that a company can encounter when its divisions have distinct strategies, especially when one division has been favored at another's expense. It also highlights how such problems can reflect cognitive biases, which... View Details
- April 2018 (Revised September 2018)
- Case
Impact Investing for Cancer
By: Richard G. Hamermesh and Matthew G. Preble
It is early 2018, and Emily Park, managing director of impact for the Abreu Family Office, is meeting the next day with Tomás and Maria Abreu to discuss the various ways in which the Abreus can allocate a planned $100 million to make a meaningful difference in cancer... View Details
- 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... View Details
- February 2018 (Revised December 2019)
- Case
The Tax Man: Taxes in Private Equity Real Estate
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz, Timothy J. Becker, Ricardo Andrade and Sayiddah F. McCree
In January 2018, Caelan Langan, an associate at KSW Partners LLC (“KSW”), was asked by Katherine Scott, the partner for whom he worked, to recommend a proposed structure to acquire a prominent office building in San Francisco for their most recent fund. Caelan was... View Details
- February 2018 (Revised February 2018)
- Supplement
HNA Group: Global Excellence with Chinese Characteristics (B)
By: William C. Kirby and Yuanzhuo Wang
This case provides a brief overview of the success and challenges of the HNA Group between 2015 and late 2017 when it grew rapidly through global acquisitions to become 170 on the 2017 Fortune 500 list. A firm that had begun as a provincial airline in China was now a... View Details
Keywords: Internationalization; Scrutiny; Growth; China; Philanthropy; One Belt One Road; Globalized Markets and Industries; Growth and Development; Acquisition; Corporate Governance; Air Transportation Industry; Financial Services Industry; Tourism Industry; China; United States; Europe; Asia; South America; Southeast Asia
- February 2018 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
Blue Haven Initiative: The PEGAfrica Investment
By: Vikram S. Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Amram Migdal
This case examines Blue Haven Initiative (BHI), an impact investing fund and family office, and one of its investments, PEGAfrica (PEG). BHI founder Liesel Pritzker Simmons’ motivations for using her family wealth to start a family office focused on impact investing,... View Details
Keywords: Impact Investing; Family Office; Development; International Development; International Development Investing; Development Fund; Sustainability; Solar Energy; Solar; Pay As You Go; PAYG; MFI; Social Venture; Business Ventures; Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Economics; Development Economics; Energy; Energy Conservation; Energy Sources; Renewable Energy; Social Entrepreneurship; Finance; Assets; Asset Pricing; Capital; Capital Budgeting; Capital Structure; Venture Capital; Cash; Cash Flow; Currency; Currency Exchange Rate; Equity; Private Equity; Financial Instruments; Debt Securities; Stock Shares; Financing and Loans; Microfinance; International Finance; Investment; Investment Return; Investment Activism; Investment Funds; Investment Portfolio; Price; Geography; Geographic Location; Emerging Markets; Ownership; Ownership Stake; Private Ownership; Social Enterprise; Value; Valuation; Value Creation; Energy Industry; Financial Services Industry; Green Technology Industry; Africa; United States
- January 2018
- Case
Environmental Technology Fund Partners and E-Leather
By: Vikram S. Gandhi and Aldo Sesia
It is 2014 and Environmental Technologies Fund (ETF) Partners, a UK-based venture capital firm, has an opportunity to invest in a privately held UK company that manufactured engineered composition leather extracted from waste leather using an environmentally friendly... View Details
- January 2018 (Revised March 2019)
- Teaching Note
Jumia Nigeria: from Retail to Marketplace (A) and (B)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
Founded in 2012, Jumia Nigeria, a startup effort by Germany-based Rocket Internet, aimed to become an African Amazon. The company entered the nascent market and immediately enjoyed an uptick in consumer spending fueled by the strength of Nigeria’s oil-based economy. By... View Details
- January 2018
- Article
The Globalization of Angel Investments: Evidence Across Countries
By: Josh Lerner, Antoinette Schoar, Stanislav Sokolinski and Karen Wilson
This paper examines investments made by 13 angel groups across 21 countries. We compare applicants just above and below the funding cutoff and find that these angel investors have a positive impact on the growth, performance, and survival of firms as well as their... View Details