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- February 2014 (Revised August 2016)
- Case
Strava
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and Sid Misra
Strava is a new fast-growing social network for the avid cyclist and runner. The Strava case traces the entrepreneurial journey of two serial entrepreneurs who have been co-founders in a prior venture, and who have co-founded Strava 3 years ago. The protagonists must... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Cycling; Biking; Running; Sports; Technology; Mobile App; Mobile; GPS; Motivation; Behavioral Science; Founders; Term Sheet; Investment; Terms; Silicon Valley; Lifestyle; Strava; Financing; Fundraising; Angel; Valuation; Growth; Forecast; Business Startups; Business Plan; Trends; Forecasting and Prediction; Decision Choices and Conditions; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Institutional Investing; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Innovation and Management; Technological Innovation; Management Succession; Growth Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Timing; Bicycle Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Technology Industry; Sports Industry; Web Services Industry; California; New England
- 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
- January 2014
- Case
Maricopa, Inc.: Finding the Right Treatment for Growth
The founders of Maricopa, Inc., a startup that sold proprietary hair-care products directly to salons, were preparing a board presentation to address the young company's inability to meet financial projections. While the products had caught on with customers, the... View Details
- January 2014 (Revised October 2014)
- Case
Andreessen Horowitz
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Liz Kind
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a venture capital firm launched in 2009, has quickly broken into the VC industry's top ranks, in terms of its ability to invest in Silicon Valley's most promising startups. The case recounts the firm's history; describes its co-founders'... View Details
- November 2013 (Revised December 2013)
- Case
Endeavor: Miami Heats Up
By: William A. Sahlman, Ramana Nanda, David Lane and Lisa Mazzanti
Endeavor Global was a nonprofit that for 15 years had worked to nurture entrepreneurship in emerging markets by selecting local high-impact entrepreneurs for mentoring and aid in scaling up their businesses from committed local business leaders. In summer 2012,... View Details
Keywords: Social Enterprise; Entrepreneurs; Scaling; Emerging Market Entrepreneurship; Not For Profit; Entrepreneurial Finance; Mentoring; Business Networks; Hybrid Nonprofit Funding; Mission and Purpose; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Entrepreneurship; Emerging Markets; Problems and Challenges; Finance; Miami
- 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
- September 2013
- Case
United Rentals (A)
By: Jay W. Lorsch, Kathleen Durante and Emily McTague
In December 1997 United Rentals (URI) went public on the NYSE. Ten years later, during the peak of the economic meltdown, the company's performance was in decline. United Rentals had experienced its share of problems in the prior years and was still struggling to... View Details
- September 2013
- Case
Homestrings, Inc.: Diaspora-Based Financing and the Crowd Funding of Development
By: William R. Kerr and Alexis Brownell
Homestrings is an online investment platform for overseas diasporas to link financially with their home countries. The founder believes crowd-funding can become a pillar for development, but U.S. regulatory hurdles and resources constraints are substantial. The company... View Details
- August 2013 (Revised December 2014)
- Case
Taking Dell Private
By: David J. Collis, David B. Yoffie and Matthew Shaffer
In July 2012, Michael Dell, CEO and founder of Dell, Inc., met with a representative of Silver Lake Partners to explore taking his company private. The company, which he had founded in his dorm room as a college freshman and which had made him the youngest Fortune 500... View Details
Keywords: Strategy; Going Private; The PC Market; Market For Corporate Control; Corporate Strategy; Leveraged Buyouts; Change Management; Private Equity; Market Entry and Exit; Private Ownership; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Internet and the Web; Computer Industry; Technology Industry; United States
- August 2013
- Case
Desi Shack: Location Choice in the Big Apple
By: William R. Kerr and Alexis Brownell
Desi Shack is a “fast casual” restaurant, started by two HBS alumni, that serves Indian and Pakistani cuisine in midtown Manhattan. The founders are looking to expand into a second location and also plan to hire a COO, and there is very little room for error in the... View Details
- July 2013 (Revised August 2017)
- Case
TaKaDu
By: Elie Ofek and Matthew Preble
In December 2012, Amir Peleg, founder and CEO of TaKaDu, reflected on how to position his young firm for the next fiscal year and beyond. The small Israeli startup had developed an innovative software system that used patented algorithms and statistical analysis to... View Details
Keywords: Innovation; Customer Selection; Business Marketing; High-tech Marketing; Enterprise Resource Planning; Water Resources; Water Management; Utilities; Product Positioning; Expansion; Resource Allocation; Applications and Software; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Business Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Growth and Development Strategy; Utilities Industry; Australia; Israel
- 2013
- Working Paper
How the Zebra Got Its Stripes: Imprinting of Individuals and Hybrid Social Ventures
By: Matthew Lee and Julie Battilana
Hybrid organizations that combine multiple, existing organizational forms are frequently proposed as a source of organizational innovation, yet little is known about the origins of such organizations. We propose that individual founders of hybrid organizations acquire... View Details
- June 2013 (Revised February 2014)
- Case
FanMode: Launching a Global Sports Venture
By: Shikhar Ghosh, William R. Kerr and Alexis Brownell
Neven Murugan is developing FanMode, an app that allows sports fans all over the world to broadcast their reactions in real time into stadiums where their team is playing. It also provides social networking across sports fans. The company is growing, and its founders... View Details
- March 2013
- Case
An Entrepreneur's New Product Development Journey
By: Elie Ofek
This case tracks the new product development process undertaken by Gauri Nanda, the founder and CEO of Nanda Home, as she ventures to innovate beyond her initial product launches. Having achieved commercial success with her first product Clocky, a roll away alarm clock... View Details
- March 2013 (Revised May 2013)
- Case
Building Innovation at Terrapin Bright Green
By: Amy C. Edmondson, Sydney Ribot and Mary Saunders
Describes Terrapin Bright Green, an environmental consulting and strategic planning firm, and its approach for creating integrative, systematic solutions to green-building conundrums through consulting, research, and policy-related activities. Emphasis is placed on the... View Details
- 2013
- Article
Achievement Motivation, Strategic Orientations and Business Performance in Entrepreneurial Firms: How Different are Japanese and American Founders?
By: Rohit Deshpandé, Amir Grinstein, Elie Ofek and Sang-Hoon Kim
Purpose: There is lack of research on the link between the personal disposition of an entrepreneurial firm's founder, the firm's strategic orientation, and its performance outcomes. Also, there is lack of cross-national research on entrepreneurial firms' strategic... View Details
Keywords: Motivation; Entrepreneurs; Japan; Motivation and Incentives; Entrepreneurship; Japan; United States
- February 2013 (Revised March 2013)
- Case
Agero: Enhancing Capabilities for Customers
By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred
This case illustrates the importance of choosing a primary customer as the basis for organization design. Cross Country Group managers adjusted resource allocation, organization design and performance measures over time to transform Cross Country Group from an... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Entrepreneurial Gap; Entrepreneurship; Auto Industry; Insurance; Performance Management; Performance Measurement; Performance Measures; Performance Pressure; Decisions; Family Business; Resource Allocation; Organizational Design; Customer Focus and Relationships; Performance Evaluation; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Industry
- February 2013
- Case
18 Months in a Startup: Zaggora.com
By: Tom Nicholas
The founders of Zaggora reflected back on a tumultuous year-and-a-half in which they had generated, from just $40,000 in personal savings, a multi-million dollar sportswear enterprise selling Hotpants to women. These were hotpants not of the 1960s hipster variety, but... View Details
- February 2013
- Case
New Enterprise Associates
By: Felda Hardymon and Tom Nicholas
NEA was established in 1977 and it subsequently morphed into one of the largest venture capital firms in the world. Despite its size and significance, some other firms established during the same era such as Kleiner-Perkins and Sequoia (both were established in 1972),... View Details
- December 2012 (Revised April 2025)
- Case
AmTran Technology Ltd.
By: Willy Shih, Jyun-Cheng Wang and Karen E. Robinson
As an original design manufacturer (ODM) of television sets and leading supplier to Vizio, a market leader in the U.S. for LCD flat panel TVs, AmTran Technology Ltd. uses what founder Alpha Wu describes as a "WE" model in which western companies perform sales,... View Details
Keywords: Modularity; Technology Transitions; Analog; Digital; Television; TV; Flat-panel; ATSC; NTSC; Video; Global Strategy; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Development; Product Design; Supply Chain; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Technology Adoption; Digital Platforms; Electronics Industry; Taiwan; United States; Japan