Publications

SSRN

December 2012 (Revised February 2014)
Case

Crafting a Founder Agreement at HealthCraft

By: Noam Wasserman, Janet Kraus and Yael Braid

HealthCraft's three founders are about to craft their founding agreement and split the equity among themselves. Uncertainty lingers over each member's future contributions, though—how is the team to devise a durable and effective split? Ever since consultant Kevin... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurs; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Health Industry

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

24 Oct 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

Startup or Established Company? Which Is Best for You?

Julia B. Austin Industry veterans doing their first startup. Founders coming from mature companies with no startup experience can have big company confidence, be great at hiring and leading teams, but lack... View Details

Keywords: by Julia B. Austin

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

July–August 2019
Article

The Soul of a Startup

By: Ranjay Gulati

There’s an essential, intangible something in start-ups—an energy, a soul. It inspires enthusiasm and fosters a sense of deep connection and mutual purpose. While this spirit persists, engagement is high and businesses keep their edge.
But all too often,... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Mission and Purpose; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Creativity; Business Growth and Maturation

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23 Dec 2014
Research & Ideas

The Founder of Modern Venture Capital

Georges F. Doriot, an educator and a founder of the modern venture capital industry, is the subject of a new exhibition and website at Harvard Business School, where he spent 40 years. The charismatic professor taught business and... View Details

Keywords: Education; Financial Services

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

01 Jun 2011
Working Paper Summaries

The First Deal: The Division of Founder Equity in New Ventures

Keywords: by Thomas F. Hellmann & Noam Wasserman

30 Oct 2019
Research & Ideas

How to Recover Gracefully After Shutting Down Your Startup

School, says that shutting down a startup is almost always a messy affair. When a venture requires a cash infusion to survive, its founders may turn to bottom-fisher investors who force the company to... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

06 May 2021
HBS Case

How Four Women Made Miami More Equitable for Startups

believe that the building alone had a strong impact on the community: “It’s made people reimagine Black neighborhoods and their innovation potential differently.” The large white attendance at BlackTech Week similarly began to showcase assets. The speakers, venture... View Details

Keywords: by Carolyn DiPaolo

04 Apr 2012
Research & Ideas

When Founders Recruit Friends and Family as Investors

the book has received rave reviews. Publisher's Weekly called it a "seminal work on the startup phase of the entrepreneurial venture captivating," and Dharmesh Shah at OnStartups.com called it "the definitive book on the... View Details

Keywords: by Noam Wasserman

21 Aug 2012
Research & Ideas

How to Sink a Startup

When Noam Wasserman (HBS MBA 1999) spent his MBA summer internship working for a VC firm, he observed important universalities in the decisions that founders faced. He also saw that the "fundamental implications of those decisions were... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons

19 Jun 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Learning to Manage: A Field Experiment in the Indian Startup Ecosystem

Keywords: by Aaron Chatterji, Solene Delecourt, Sharique Hasan, and Rembrand Koning; Technology

March 2019
Article

When Does Advice Impact Startup Performance?

By: Aaron Chatterji, Solène Delecourt, Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning

Why do some entrepreneurs thrive while others fail? We explore whether the advice entrepreneurs receive about managing their employees influences their startup's performance. We conducted a randomized field experiment in India with 100 high-growth technology firms... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Field Experiment; Peer Effects; Entrepreneurial Ecosystems; Advice; Management Style; Management Practices and Processes; Knowledge Dissemination; Entrepreneurship; Performance; India

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2011
Working Paper

The First Deal: The Division of Founder Equity in New Ventures

By: Thomas F. Hellmann and Noam Wasserman

This paper examines the division of founder shares in entrepreneurial ventures, focusing on the decision of whether or not to divide the shares equally among all founders. To motivate the empirical analysis we develop a simple theory of costly bargaining, where... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Decision Choices and Conditions; Entrepreneurship; Fairness; Equity; Managerial Roles; Negotiation Deal; Ownership Stake; Value

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05 Dec 2023
Cold Call Podcast

What Founders Get Wrong about Sales and Marketing

Keywords: Re: Mark N. Roberge

07 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

Why Companies Fail—and How Their Founders Can Bounce Back

then falling short of meeting it, then the failure rate is a whopping 90 to 95 percent. "Very few companies achieve their initial projections," says Ghosh. "Failure is the norm." Why Start-ups Fail Start-ups often fail because View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

February 2024
Case

AGENTS.inc: Pathways to Growth at an AI Startup

By: Frank Nagle, Manuel Hoffmann, Karoline Ströhlein and Susan Pinckney

The case describes the history of AGENTS.inc. Despite being a small startup, with only four employees, that had never had a funding round, the company boasted an impressive client portfolio including multiple Fortune 500 companies. While AGENTS.inc had been an early... View Details

2012
Book

The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup

By: Noam Wasserman

Often downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face: Should they go it alone or bring in cofounders, hires, and investors to help build the business? More than just financial rewards... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Partners and Partnerships; Social Psychology; Outcome or Result

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