Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,126)
- Faculty Publications (182)
- May 2022 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
Founder Collective
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
Founder Collective ("FC") launched in 2009 with a clear mission: to be the most aligned fund for founders at the seed stage. In keeping with its mission, FC maintained smaller fund sizes and was not a lifecycle investor. By November of 2021, the seed market had become... View Details
- May 2022
- Case
From GOP to NFT: Anthony Scaramucci and the Launch of Flatter NFT
By: Lauren Cohen, Richard Ryffel and Grace Headinger
Anthony Scaramucci, Managing Director of SkyBridge Capital, considered whether he should officially greenlight the launch of SkyBridge’s own NFT platform — Flatter NFT. He had led the investment firm to push first into Bitcoin and then Ethereum to make SkyBridge a... View Details
Keywords: Business Startup; Fintech; Technology; Cryptocurrency; Web3; Business Startups; Volatility; Decision Making; Entertainment; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Strategic Planning; Adoption; Competitive Advantage; Technology Adoption; Finance; Currency; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; New York (city, NY)
- April 2022
- Case
Pear Venture Capital
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
Keith Bender, Principal at Pear Venture Capital, is working over the weekend to prepare for a Monday morning investment meeting. He has three startup pitch decks in front of him, and he must choose one to recommend at the meeting. He finds that each company has its... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Transferable Skills? Founders as Venture Capitalists
By: Paul A. Gompers and Vladimir Mukharlyamov
In this paper we explore whether or not the experience as a founder of a venture capital-backed startup influences the performance of founders who become venture capitalists (VCs). We find that nearly 7% of VCs were previously founders of a venture-backed startup.... View Details
- March 2022
- Case
DealShare: Social E-Commerce for the Indian Mass Market
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Malini Sen
Launched in September 2018, e-retail startup DealShare has created a tech-enabled model for the Indian mass market that allows customers to buy together, save money on good quality goods, and at the same time have fun. It targets customers who are still getting used to... View Details
- February 2022
- Case
Agora (A)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
Agora was a civic technology (civic tech) startup founded by Elsa Sze, who wanted to enhance the connection between political officials and their constituents by facilitating virtual “town halls,” making underrepresented voices heard and benefiting elected and... View Details
- February 2022
- Supplement
Agora (B)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
This is the conclusion to Agora (A), where founder Elsa Sze decides if she wants to continue investing energy in her civic technology startup.
Agora was a civic technology (civic tech) startup founded by Elsa Sze, who wanted to enhance the connection between... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
The Transformation of Self Employment
By: Innessa Colaiacovo, Margaret Dalton, Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr
Over the past half-century, while self-employment has consistently accounted for around one in ten of the United States workforce, its composition has changed. Since 1970, industries with high startup capital requirements have declined from 53% of self-employment to... View Details
- 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
- December 2021 (Revised January 2023)
- Supplement
Katerra (B)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
In May 2020, SoftBank executives, having invested nearly $2 billion in Katerra, decided the vision of an end-to-end, vertically-integrated construction process was worth saving—with some major changes to company structure. The SoftBank Vision Fund invested $200 million... View Details
- 2021
- Article
Venture Capital Booms and Startup Financing
By: William Janeway, Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf
We review the growing literature on the relationship between venture capital booms and startup financing, focusing on three broad areas: First, we discuss the drivers of large inflows into the venture capital asset class, particularly in recent years—which are related... View Details
- October 2021
- Case
Unshrinking the Pie: Desirée Stolar's Negotiation Saga (A)
By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green
When Desirée (“Des”) Stolar’s wool sweater shrank two sizes, the Harvard Business School student worked with classmates to develop a solution that both fixed her problem and launched Unshrinkit, a successful consumer goods company with a widely-available product for... View Details
- October 2021
- Supplement
Unshrinking the Pie: Desirée Stolar's Negotiation Saga (B)
By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green
When Desirée (“Des”) Stolar’s wool sweater shrank two sizes, the Harvard Business School student worked with classmates to develop a solution that both fixed her problem and launched Unshrinkit, a successful consumer goods company with a widely-available product for... View Details
- September 2021 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
On the Bubble: Startup Bootstrapping
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Tom Quinn and Annelena Lobb
Bubble was a software company in the low-code/no-code market, making tools that allowed users without traditional programming backgrounds or technical skills to build software. The case covers cofounder Joshua Haas’s engineering background, as he experienced a high... View Details
Keywords: Business Startups; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Model; Business Plan; Disruption; Transformation; Trends; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Relationship Management; Cost vs Benefits; Decisions; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Equity; Executive Compensation; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Job Interviews; Growth and Development Strategy; Ownership Stake; Opportunities; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; New York (city, NY); California; France
- September 2021 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
MAYA Capital
By: Robert F. White, Carla Larangeira and Pedro Levindo
MAYA Capital co-founders Lara Lemann and Monica Saggioro raised $41.5 million through a series of closings for their early-stage Latin American venture capital fund. The two women had met for the first time in mid-2016 when Lemann was contemplating scaling her angel... View Details
- July 2021 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Fynd
By: Ranjay Gulati, Kairavi Dey and Rachna Tahilyani
Fynd is a fast-growing venture that in 7 years since its founding has become India's largest omnichannel retail company with real-time access to over 9,000 stores' offline inventory. It started as a B2B business supporting retailers who didn’t have an online business,... View Details
- May 2021
- Case
Inclusive Innovation at Mass General Brigham
By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman and Olivia Hull
Massachusetts General Brigham (MGB) Chief Innovation Officer Christopher Coburn had overseen a period of exciting transformation and growth in healthcare innovation at MGB. In November 2019, the health system was the largest recipient of National Institutes of Health... View Details
Keywords: Inclusion; Innovation; Invention; Gender; Business Startups; Investment Funds; Private Equity; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Intellectual Property; Copyright; Patents; Research; Research and Development; Diversification; Technology; Health Industry; Massachusetts; Boston
- May 2021
- Article
Mutual Funds as Venture Capitalists? Evidence from Unicorns
By: Josh Lerner, Sergey Chernenko and Yao Zeng
The past decade saw the rise of both “founder-friendly” venture financings and non-traditional investors, frequently with liquidity constraints. Using detailed contract data, we study open-end mutual funds investing in private venture-backed firms. We posit an... View Details
- April 2021
- Case
Glass-Shattering Leaders: Ana Paula Pessoa
By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman
Ana Paula Pessoa built a career at the largest media conglomerate in Latin America, combining a passion for digital transformation with a commitment to doing work that had a positive impact on society. Having grown up during a dictatorial military regime in Brazil, the... View Details
- February 2021 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
Collab Capital
Founded in 2020 by Jewel Burks Solomon and her partners, Barry Givens and Justin Dawkins, Collab Capital was a new investment firm built on two pillars: first, it would identify and support ventures founded by Black entrepreneurs, a group underrepresented in... View Details