Publications

Research Summary

Overview

My main topics of interest in research all center around Africa. It is my ambition to take HBS more into Africa and to bring Africa more into HBS. I am particularly interested in a) the building of businesses in Africa. I want to focus on those elements that an HBS MBA... View Details

November 2012 (Revised December 2017)
Case

TerraPower

By: William A. Sahlman, Ramana Nanda, Joseph B. Lassiter III and James McQuade

John Gilleland, CEO of TerraPower, returned to his office after a lengthy meeting with potential investors. It was October 2012, and TerraPower was in the process of raising a $200M Series C round to finance the ongoing development of its next-generation nuclear... View Details

Keywords: Nuclear Power; Entrepreneurial Finance; Financing and Loans; Venture Capital; Energy Industry; United States; China; India

December 2012 (Revised May 2014)
Case

Hotel Ivory

By: Arthur I Segel, Nicolas P. Retsinas and Jonathan Lo

Cheick Sanankoua is an MBA student who believes that he has found the perfect investment property, a small, independently owned hotel, on the Ivory Coast. However, he has had trouble raising money for the investment beyond friends and family. Through contacts in the... View Details

Keywords: Real Estate; Emergent Countries; Investing; Entrepreneurial Finance; Debts; Cash Flow; Quantitative Analysis; Financing; Development Stage Enterprises; Small ＆ Medium-sized Enterprises; Africa; Ivory Coast; Venture Capital; Emerging Markets; Property; Investment; Accommodations Industry; Real Estate Industry; Africa

April 2023 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Eike Batista: Making or Breaking Brazil

By: Geoffrey Jones, Pedro Magalhães, Daniel Tong and Marcel Anduiza

This case explores the meteoric rise and fall of Eike Batista, once Brazil’s richest person and the world’s seventh wealthiest in 2012. Batista began his career by investing in gold mining in the Amazon, using the network his father had built after years serving as... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Energy Industry; Mining Industry; Brazil

October 2022
Case

EducationSuperHighway 2.0

By: William A. Sahlman, Allison M. Ciechanover and Emily Grandjean

In 2012, Evan Marwell launched EducationSuperHighway (ESH) to address a major problem: though most public K-12 schools in the US had access to the Internet, only roughly 30% had true broadband access that would enable every student to have high speed connectivity. ... View Details

Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Social Entrepreneurship; Social Issues; Leading Change; Early Childhood Education; Infrastructure; Internet and the Web; Telecommunications Industry; Education Industry; Technology Industry; United States; San Francisco

11 Jun 2014
Blog Post

Alumni: Where are they now? Featuring Joe…

Current Position: Associate with Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital Current Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Tell us what you’re up to these days. I’m currently an Associate with Chrysalix, a leading early-stage venture View Details

Keywords: Technology

December 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Case

iyzico: Fundraising in Emerging Markets (A)

By: Marco Di Maggio and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in 2016 as Barbaros Ozbugutu, co-founder and CEO of the Istanbul-based payment technology start-up iyzico, contemplates the offers the company received for its Series C round. The case then describes iyzico’s origins and provides a detailed overview of... View Details

Keywords: Iyzico; Fundraising; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Emerging Markets; Private Sector; For-Profit Firms; Management; Information Technology; Growth Management; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Negotiation Offer; Decision Making; Turkey

2011
Teaching Note

Juner New Materials: On the Road to IPO (TN)

By: F. Warren McFarlan, Donglin Xia, Ning Jia and Ziqian Zhao

Juner New Materials (Juner) is a private China-based company that develops, produces, and distributes modified plastic compounds. Founded in 1995 by female serial entrepreneur Xiaomin Chen, Juner has exhibited strong performance and growth potential in the past fifteen... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Entrepreneurship; Financial Statements; IPO; Valuation; Women Executives; China; Plastics; China

August 2015
Article

Dollar Funding and the Lending Behavior of Global Banks

By: Victoria Ivashina, David S. Scharfstein and Jeremy C. Stein

A large share of dollar-denominated lending is done by non-U.S. banks, particularly European banks. We present a model in which such banks cut dollar lending more than euro lending in response to a shock to their credit quality. Because these banks rely on wholesale... View Details

Keywords: Banks; Global Banks; Credit Supply; Dollar Funding; International Finance; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry

A large share of dollar-denominated lending is done by non-U.S. banks, particularly European banks. We present a model in which such banks cut dollar lending more than euro lending in response to a shock to their credit quality. Because these banks rely on wholesale... View Details

Cases Featuring Jeff

Jeff’s involvement with Open Market and Upromise has been the subject of the following cases.

UPromise 2002: Describes a set of decisions confronting the senior management of a company that has established a loyalty rewards program... View Details

May 2022
Case

Deborah Quazzo at GSV Ventures

By: William A. Sahlman, Michael D. Smith and Nicole Tempest Keller

As COVID-19 swept across the globe in 2020, the education sector faced unprecedented disruption. Schools and colleges worldwide shut down, forcing over a billion students and teachers to move to online learning. Investor interest in the EdTech space exploded as... View Details

Keywords: Edtech; Technology; Online Learning; COVID-19 Pandemic; Education; Information Technology; Venture Capital; Change Management; Strategy; Education Industry; Financial Services Industry; Chicago; California

February 1995 (Revised September 1995)
Case

The Bourland Companies

By: William J. Poorvu and John H. Vogel Jr.

Michael Bourland, the president of the Bourland Companies, needs to refinance two properties, an office building in southern New Hampshire and a retail property in Massachusetts. He is considering three alternatives: a renewal of a bank mini-perm, a 15-year mortgage... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Property; Mortgages; Family Business; Financial Management; Family Ownership; Real Estate Industry; Massachusetts; North and Central America

09 Jan 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Economic Transition and Private-Sector Labor Demand: Evidence from Urban China

Keywords: by Lakshmi Iyer, Xin Meng, Nancy Qian & Xiaoxue Zhao

August 2008 (Revised December 2009)
Case

Nantero

By: William A. Sahlman, Dan Heath and Caroline Perkins

This case describes a decision confronting the founder of Nantero, a company developing a new semiconductor technology. The company needs to raise additional venture capital. Potential investors have competing visions for the company, and its business model. Some... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Decision Choices and Conditions; Venture Capital; Investment; Product Development; Production; Technology; Semiconductor Industry

March 1995 (Revised July 1996)
Case

Mattson Foods, Inc. (Revised): The Bardolini Division

By: Steven C. Wheelwright

The Bardolini Division of Mattson Foods, with plants in the northeast and midwest, wants to open up the western market for its pizza. Management must decide whether to build a new plant on the West Coast, and what type of technology to put in the plant if they decide... View Details

Keywords: Logistics; Emerging Markets; Business Startups; Decision Choices and Conditions; Business Plan; Capital Budgeting; Expansion; Buildings and Facilities; Strategic Planning; Marketing Strategy; Technology; Economic Systems; Food and Beverage Industry

September 2009
Case

ZINK Imaging: 'Zero Ink™'

By: William A. Sahlman and Sarah Flaherty

"ZINK Imaging" describes the issues confronting CEO Wendy Caswell as she uses a partnership model to commercialize ZINK's disruptive printing technology platform, ZINK Paper. The case focuses on the frameworks ZINK has used to decide which markets to target and which... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Capital; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Marketing Strategy; Partners and Partnerships; Horizontal Integration; Technology Industry

January 2023 (Revised December 2023)
Case

OhmConnect: Energizing the Future

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Jennifer Fonstad and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded in 2013, OhmConnect was a free consumer web app that alerted customers about peak hours of electricity demand, and paid them to lower their energy use at home during these periods. The company sold the aggregated reductions generated by thousands of households... View Details

Keywords: App Development; Renewable Energy; Electricity Usage; Regulations; VC; Technology; Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC); Scalability; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business Model; Venture Capital; Energy Industry; United States; California; Texas; Europe