Publications

August 2002 (Revised July 2003)
Case

LAE Enterprises Corp.

Jay Entrepreneur had to decide whether it was worth his time to plow through a 12-page term sheet for a Series A round of preferred stock prepared by HBS Investors, a well-established venture capital firm that did seed, early-round, and mezzanine financings. He could... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Contracts; Decision Choices and Conditions; Business Startups; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

January 2001
Case

Valuing Project Achieve

By: Mihir A. Desai and Kathleen Luchs

Project Achieve is a start-up providing information management solutions for schools. Its founders see a need for software both to manage the volumes of information necessary to administer a school and to connect parents, teachers, and students in a more effective way.... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Valuation; Venture Capital; Cost of Capital; Cash Flow; Forecasting and Prediction

June 2021
Case

uBiome

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Olivia Graham

uBiome provided clinical tests that sequenced the DNA of human microbiome samples, providing data on health conditions directly to consumers or to prescribing physicians. Founded in 2012, the San Francisco-based startup raised $105 million from top-tier venture capital... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Crime and Corruption; Insolvency and Bankruptcy

December 2021 (Revised January 2023)
Case

Katerra (A)

By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn

In April 2020, Katerra executives struggled with a series of decisions that would determine the fate of one of the best-funded construction startups in history. Katerra was founded in 2015 by technology-industry executive Michael Marks and commercial real estate... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Entrepreneurship; Failure; Construction; Real Estate Industry; Technology Industry; United States

November 2006 (Revised August 2008)
Case

Lincoln Electric

By: Jordan I. Siegel

The case describes Lincoln Electric's business strategy and incentive system, and it discusses the global strategy choices that the company faces going forward. Lincoln Electric is deciding whether a strong push into India should be the next step in the company's... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Strategy; Expansion; India

May 2024 (Revised May 2025)
Case

Hakluyt: From Corporate Intelligence to Trusted Advisors

By: Joseph B. Fuller and Lena Duchene

Established in 1995 by a group of ex-British intelligence officers, Hakluyt & Company (Hakluyt) was a corporate advisory firm that generated insights by leveraging a unique blend of internal expertise and a global network of well-connected individuals. Since 2019, the... View Details

2008
Article

Governance and Merger Accounting: Evidence from Stock Price Reactions to Purchase versus Pooling

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez

This paper examines the effect of corporate governance on investor reactions to accounting choice in the context of accounting for business combinations. Using a sample of 324 recent stock swap acquisitions I find that, contrary to practitioners' belief that capital... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Mergers and Acquisitions; Capital Markets; Stocks; Price; Corporate Governance

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May 2008 (Revised March 2009)
Case

SKS Microfinance

By: Shawn A. Cole and Theresa Chen

Vikram Akula, CEO of SKS Microfinance, seeks a venture capital investment to fund his firm. SKS, one of the largest and fastest growing microfinance institutions in India, is a profitable, for-profit institution with a social mission. In what is one of the first... View Details

Keywords: For-Profit Firms; Venture Capital; Microfinance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Valuation; Financial Services Industry; India

January 2009
Article

Turbulent Firms, Turbulent Wages?

By: Diego A. Comin, Erica L. Groshen and Bess Rabin

Has greater turbulence among firms fueled rising wage instability in the U.S.? Gottschalk and Moffitt [1994] find that rising earnings instability was responsible for one third to one half of the rise in wage inequality during the 1980s. These growing transitory... View Details

Keywords: Wages; Production; Business Earnings; Fluctuation; Performance; Volatility; Relationships; Sales; Business Ventures; United States

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February 2015 (Revised February 2016)
Case

CrossFit (A)

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Ali Huberlie and Christopher Payton

The case provides a sense of motivations of venture capital firms, the pivotal role that founders play, and explores the limits of founder-driven growth.
CrossFit (CF) describes the approach taken by its founder Greg Glassman in setting up one of the most... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Venture Capital; Strategy; Organizational Culture; Entrepreneurship; Franchise Ownership; Innovation and Invention; United States; North America

March 2017
Case

SKS Microfinance (Abridged)

By: Shawn Cole and Theresa Chen

Vikram Akula, CEO of SKS Microfinance, seeks a venture capital investment to fund his firm. SKS, one of the largest and fastest growing microfinance institutions in India, is a profitable, for-profit institution with a social mission. In what is one of the first... View Details

Keywords: For-Profit Firms; Venture Capital; Microfinance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Valuation; Financial Services Industry; India

February 2022 (Revised March 2022)
Case

MicroStrategy's Investment in Bitcoin

By: C. Fritz Foley

At the end of the second quarter of 2020, MicroStrategy, a Virginia based provider of analytics software and services, announced plans to acquire and hold bitcoin as a part of the firm’s treasury reserve policy and corporate strategy. Within a year, the firm purchased... View Details

Keywords: Bitcoin; Corporate Strategy; Acquisition; Investment Portfolio; Capital Structure; Equity

Suraj Srinivasan is the Philip J. Stomberg Professor of Business Administration, a member of the Accounting and Management faculty unit, and chair of the View Details

Keywords: accounting industry; financial services

February 2024 (Revised February 2025)
Case

Financing Matillion's Scaleup (A)

By: Raymond Kluender, Emanuele Colonnelli and Ramana Nanda

In 2019, Matthew Scullion, founder and CEO of U.K. startup Matillion, faced a decision about which term sheet to accept for the lead investor in his company’s $35 million Series C financing round. Would the connections and opportunities offered by Silicon Valley-based... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Negotiation; Ownership; Business Startups; Decisions; Venture Capital; Financing and Loans; Valuation; Information Technology Industry; United Kingdom

March 2006
Course Overview Note

International Finance: A Course Overview Note

By: Mihir A. Desai

Describes the International Finance course at Harvard Business School, which argues that the forces of globalization have fundamentally changed the scope and activities of firms, thereby altering the practice of finance within these firms. As a consequence of an... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Business Ventures; Integration; Change Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment; Risk Management; Competitive Advantage; Motivation and Incentives; International Finance; Capital Markets

2014
Chapter

Payout Policy

By: Joan Farre-Mensa, Roni Michaely and Martin Schmalz

We survey the literature on payout policy, with a particular emphasis on developments in the last two decades. Of the traditional motives of why firms pay out (agency, signaling, and taxes), the cross-sectional empirical evidence is most persuasive in favor of agency... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Investment; Financial Services Industry

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September 2019
Case

Dementia Discovery Fund

By: Richard G. Hamermesh, Kathy Giusti and Sarah Gulick

The case is set in March 2019, and tells the story of the founding of the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF). The idea for the fund began in 2015, when then-Prime Minister David Cameron spoke about the importance of making breakthroughs in dementia research, and pledged... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Investment Funds; Mission and Purpose; Recruitment; Health Care and Treatment; Pharmaceutical Industry; Financial Services Industry; Boston; Massachusetts; London; England