Publications

February 2022 (Revised November 2022)
Case

Fondeadora

By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui and Mitchell Weiss

Norman Müller and René Serrano, cofounders of Fondeadora, a Mexican “neobank,” had lined up a $12.5 million in Series A funding round in 2020 only to run into a major obstacle: The lead investor was Gradient Ventures, a venture firm launched by Alphabet, Inc., and... View Details

Keywords: Fundraising; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Financial Institutions; Business Startups; Government Legislation; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Financial Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Mexico City; Latin America

11 Nov 2014
First Look

First Look: November 11

and the recent allegations against the Firm's former Managing Director, Rajat Gupta. Three months earlier Senior Partner, Anil Kumar, plead guilty to providing confidential information about McKinsey clients he served to Galleon Group View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 2015
Case

BOLT: Seed Venture Capital Firm

By: William A. Sahlman and Robert F. White

BOLT is a different kind of seed venture capital firm built to serve the needs of early-stage startups at the intersection of hardware and software.

In the past decade, the cost of entrepreneurial experimentation has dropped dramatically, particularly in web... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Accelerator; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Venture Capital; Applications and Software; Information Infrastructure; Strategy

27 Apr 2021
Research & Ideas

IPO or M&A? How Venture Capital Shapes a Startup's Future

company to a larger one. In contrast, startups funded by a VC syndicate with less familiar co-investors are most likely to exit through a potentially splashy IPO that could let founders retain more control,... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

October 2023 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Bizongo and e-B2B in India

By: Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui and Radhika Kak

Bizongo, an Indian e-B2B platform was co-founded by three college graduates in 2015 with the goal of creating the "Alibaba of India" when the B2B e-commerce landscape was practically non-existent. The founders saw a significant opportunity in connecting mid-sized... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Decision Choices and Conditions; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; E-commerce; Business Strategy; India

July 2022 (Revised February 2024)
Teaching Note

The DivaCup: Navigating Distribution and Growth

By: Ayelet Israeli

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 519-055. When the mother-daughter founders of DivaCup set out with a mission to disrupt the menstrual care industry with an innovative product form, they initially struggled to gain legitimacy and convince retailers to carry their unique... View Details

March 2019 (Revised April 2021)
Case

The DivaCup: Navigating Distribution and Growth

By: Ayelet Israeli

When the mother-daughter founders of DivaCup set out with a mission to disrupt the menstrual care industry with an innovative product form, they initially struggled to gain legitimacy and convince retailers to carry their unique product. Fifteen years later, the... View Details

12 Jan 2016
First Look

January 12, 2016

transpires within the larger, corporate context of Intuit, where founder Scott Cook has been attempting to transform the enterprise into a leaner, more innovative company. The case describes in detail the lean View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

December 2018 (Revised June 2021)
Supplement

Bulb 2017: Launch

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

On August 21, 2015, Amit Gudka and Hayden Wood, co-founders of Bulb Ltd. (Bulb) launched a new business to supply energy to the United Kingdom’s 27 million residential homes with a promise of 100% renewable electricity at affordable prices. By the end of March 2017,... View Details

01 Feb 2022
Book

Innovation Isn’t Just for Startups: How Big Companies Can Succeed

What if more managers at big corporations channeled some of the same magic that helped Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos lead their startups to great success? Large companies are actually... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

10 Jan 2023
Op-Ed

Time to Move On? Career Advice for Entrepreneurs Preparing for the Next Stage

partner to be your listening guide as you talk them through; be sure to encourage them just to listen and be curious about insights versus helping you try to solve things. The prompts below are very career-centric, geared towards startup... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

November 2023 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Norse Atlantic Airways

By: Willy Shih

Bjørn Tore Larsen, Norse Atlantic Airways' founder and CEO, hadn't planned to get into the airline business. But when the COVID-19 pandemic depressed the global demand for air travel and the lease rates for jetliners, he realized if ever he was going to get into the... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Business Startups; Market Entry and Exit; Leasing; Business Strategy; Segmentation; Interest Rates; Air Transportation Industry; Europe; North America; Norway; United Kingdom; United States

22 Nov 2016
First Look

November 22, 2016

Care Thaddeus Fulford-Jones and Eric Weiss, founders of healthcare technology startup Radial Analytics, have been busy developing a software program designed to save hospitals money and improve patient... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

21 Jun 2022
HBS Case

Free Isn’t Always Better: How Slack Holds Its Own Against Microsoft Teams

who are accustomed to team messaging. “It’s early in the game,” Yoffie says. “We’re in the second or third inning. There’s plenty of time to develop the competition and for new outcomes to emerge.” Microsoft plays catch up to Slack Canadian entrepreneur and Flickr... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Information Technology; Technology

06 Feb 2020
Research & Ideas

What We Learned from Reading Jeff Bezos’ Patents

From an early age, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had a passion for inventing. In The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, journalist Brad Stone wrote that even as a child, “Bezos had dreams of becoming an inventor like Thomas... View Details

Keywords: by Tricia Gregg and Boris Groysberg; Retail

May 2019 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Mobike and ofo: Dancing with Titans (A)

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Haibo Zhao

This case address pacing issues – how fast does a company need to scale? It also examines the role of investors in determining company strategy and exit.
Mobike and ofo were two dominant players in China’s emerging dockless bike-sharing market, that allowed users... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Venture Capital; Financing and Loans; Competition; Value Creation; Governance; Economics; Business Startups; Strategy; Business Exit or Shutdown; Entrepreneurship; Infrastructure; Transportation; Bicycle Transportation; China

12 Aug 2019
Research & Ideas

How Scale Changes a Manager's Responsibilities

I've experienced first-hand the excitement and pain that come as companies with a few founders scale to hundreds or thousands of employees. At somewhere around 75 to 100 employees, running a business becomes more complicated, demanding... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

August 2011 (Revised October 2011)
Case

PureTech Ventures in 2011

By: Andrei Hagiu, Cesar Castro and Sarah Murphy

In early May 2011, Daphne Zohar, founder and managing partner of PureTech Ventures, a life science venture creation company in Boston, MA, was reviewing a term sheet she had just received from a venture capital (VC) firm for one of PureTech's portfolio companies. The... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Investment; Innovation and Invention; Negotiation; Partners and Partnerships; Science-Based Business; Opportunities; Boston