Publications

February 2014 (Revised April 2015)
Case

Go Beyond Investing

By: Lynda Applegate, Vincent Dessain, Emilie Billaud and Daniela Beyersdorfer

In 2013, Brigitte Baumann, founder of the Pan-European angel investing provider Go Beyond Investing, reflected on the evolution of her venture and the way forward. Her company, which offered deal flow and training to novice and experienced angel investors and ran... View Details

Keywords: Equity; Investment; Business or Company Management; Growth Management; Leadership; Financial Services Industry; Europe; Switzerland

Web

Angel Njenga Archives | Social Enterprise

Curriculum Social Enterprise Student Club Social Entrepreneurship Summer Fellows Technology for Good Transformative Impact Tri-Sector Impact 1 Results Investing in Education to Help Meet the Needs of Learners Everywhere: SE Summer Fellow... View Details

March 2011
Article

An Angel Investor with an Agenda

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Beatriz Muñoz-Seca

Keywords: Investment

Find at Harvard

01 Feb 1999
News

NYC Conference Brings Entrepreneurs and Angels Together

investment vehicles used by angel investors to find and fund entrepreneurs: groups of angels who evaluate deals together, organizations that match entrepreneurs with interested... View Details

20 Aug 2024
Cold Call Podcast

Angel City Football Club: A New Business Model for Women’s Sports

Keywords: Re: Jeffrey F. Rayport; Sports; Entertainment & Recreation

20 Aug 2024
Interview

Angel City Football Club: A New Business Model for Women’s Sports

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Brian Kenny and Nicole Tempest Keller

Angel City Football Club (ACFC) was founded in 2020 by venture capitalist Kara Nortman, entrepreneur Julie Uhrman, and actor and activist Natalie Portman. As outsiders to professional sports, the all-female founding team had rewritten the playbook for how to build a... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Gender; Franchise Ownership; Business Model; Sports Industry

24 Feb 2021
News

Inside the Morgan Stanley Multicultural Innovation Lab

Keywords: Angels

25 Apr 2014
News

Investing in Innovation

and society have never been more divided. Even as the economy has recovered, trust has not. As business leaders, we need to remind the public that business is a force for good and is fundamental to societal progress by creating jobs, View Details

Keywords: HBS Fund; Educational Services

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

Keywords: Angel Investors; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurial Finance; Finance; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Financial Services Industry; United States

Web

Investing in Education to Help Meet the Needs of Learners Everywhere: SE Summer Fellow Angel Njenga (MBA 2022) | Social Enterprise | Harvard Business School

10 Nov 2003
Research & Ideas

The Hard Numbers on Social Investments

the Domini Index (investments in socially responsible mutual funds) realized a 13 percent return, and the S&P 500 returned 11 percent. The average returns of traditional angel investing are hard to... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

Article

Managing the Unknowable: The Effectiveness of Early-stage Investor Gut Feel in Entrepreneurial Investment Decisions

By: Laura Huang and Jone L. Pearce

Using an inductive theory-development study, a field experiment, and a longitudinal field test, we examine early-stage entrepreneurial investment decision making under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Building on existing literature on decision making and risk in... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Risk and Uncertainty; Decision Making; Emotions; Performance Effectiveness

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18 Oct 2016
Op-Ed

Why Business Should Invest in Community Health

Children in the United States today are at risk to live shorter lives than their parents. This sobering assessment is one reason big box retailer Target is investing $40 million this year to improve the health of communities around the... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch, Howard Koh, and Pamela Yatsko; Health

March 2016
Article

The Role of Investor Gut Feel in Managing Complexity and Extreme Risk

By: Laura Huang

Securing financial resources from investors is a key challenge for many early stage entrepreneurial ventures. Given the inherent uncertainty surrounding a decision to invest in these ventures, prior research has found that experienced investors rely heavily on their... View Details

Keywords: Angel Investors; Gut Feel; Intuition; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Risk and Uncertainty; Complexity; Decision Making

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02 Apr 2018
Research & Ideas

Is 'Gut Feel' a Good Reason to Invest in a Startup?

point to a surprising explanation: their gut. “If they relied solely on pro-con lists, or what the hard numbers look like for the company at their current state, probably none of these investments would be made,” Huang says. “Gut feel is... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

March 2017 (Revised November 2021)
Case

Floodgate: On the Hunt for Thunder Lizards

By: Rory McDonald, Alix Burke, Emma Franking and Nicole Tempest

Founded in 2008, Floodgate pioneered the “micro-VC” category, a new type of investment firm that raised smaller funds and made earlier, smaller investments in technology startups than traditional venture-capital firms. By 2015, Floodgate had raised three funds totaling... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Business Models; Angel Investors; Crowdfunding; Incubators; Accelerators; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Information Technology; Business Model; Innovation and Invention; Competitive Strategy

February 2014
Background Note

Raising Startup Capital

By: Jeffrey Bussgang

Entrepreneurs typically focus their full energies on business-building. But raising capital is a core part of building a valuable business. Developing expertise in raising capital is more than a necessary evil, it is a competitive weapon. Master it and you will be in a... View Details