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- March 2021
- Supplement
CashDrop (B2)
By: Rembrand Koning, Paul A. Gompers and Sarah Gulick
After the events in CashDrop A, Jarrid Tingle and Henri Pierre-Jacques, the founders of Harlem Capital partners, worried that Ruben Flores-Martinez, CashDrop’s founder, would take another offer while he waited for them to officially make an offer. HCP traditionally... View Details
- March 2021
- Teaching Plan
The Black New Venture Competition
By: Karen G. Mills, Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Martin A. Sinozich and Gabriella Elanbeck
Black entrepreneurs encounter many unique obstacles when raising capital to start and grow a business, some stemming from deep systemic discrimination. During their second year at Harvard Business School (HBS), MBA students Kimberly Foster and Tyler Simpson decided to... View Details
Keywords: Analytics; Startup; Start-up; Startup Financing; Financing; Startups; Start-ups; Business And Community; Business And Society; Business Growth; Discrimination; Women; Women-owned Businesses; African Americans; African-american Entrepreneurs; African-american Investors; African-American Protagonist; African-American Women; Early Stage Funding; Early Stage; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Innovation Competitions; Entrepreneurial Financing; Business Plan; Business Startups; Diversity; Gender; Race; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Small Business; Leadership; Information Technology; Competition
- Article
How Venture Capitalists Make Decisions
By: Paul A. Gompers, Will Gornall, Steven Kaplan and Ilya Strebulaev
For decades now, venture capitalists have played a crucial role in the economy by financing high-growth start-ups. While the companies they’ve backed—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and more—are constantly in the headlines, very little is known about what VCs actually... View Details
- October 2020 (Revised December 2020)
- Case
AfricInvest: A Pan-African Investment Platform
By: Victoria Ivashina and Youssef Abdel Aal
The case is set in December 2018, when Ziad Oueslati, co-managing director and co-founder of AfricInvest, a leading pan-African private equity firm headquartered in Tunisia, was reflecting on the future direction of his firm. AfricInvest started as a traditional small... View Details
- October 2020 (Revised December 2020)
- Case
Investing at Pivotal Ventures
By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Emily R. McComb and Eren Kuzucu
Launched in 2015 by Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Pivotal Ventures is an investment and incubation company. The company aims to support and promote transformational ideas, people and organizations, and advance social progress for women... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Private Equity and COVID-19
By: Paul A. Gompers, Steven N. Kaplan and Vladimir Mukharlyamov
We survey more than 200 private equity (PE) managers from firms with $1.9 trillion of assets under management (AUM) about their portfolio performance, decisionmaking and activities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Given that PE managers have significant incentives to... View Details
- September 2020
- Case
The Black New Venture Competition
By: Karen Mills, Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Martin Sinozich and Gabriella Elanbeck
Black entrepreneurs encounter many unique obstacles when raising capital to start and grow a business. During their second year at Harvard Business School (HBS), MBA students Kimberly Foster and Tyler Simpson decided to do something to make a difference for... View Details
Keywords: Startup; Start-up; Startup Financing; Startups; Start-ups; African-American Protagonist; African-american Entrepreneurs; African-american Investors; African-Americans; African-American Women; Black Leadership; Black Inventors; Black Entrepreneurs; Harvard Business School; Harvard; Business And Society; Early Stage Funding; Early Stage Finance; Technology Entrepreneurship; Discrimination; Technology Ventures; Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurial Financing; Business Plan; Business Startups; Business Ventures; Financing and Loans; Business Growth and Maturation; Diversity; Gender; Race; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Small Business; Leadership; Information Technology; Competition; Technology Industry
- September 2020
- Teaching Plan
Harlem Capital: Changing the Face of Entrepreneurship
By: George Serafeim
Jarrid Tingle and Henri Pierre-Jacques had spent the summer between their first and second years of their MBA program fund raising for their start-up venture capital (VC) firm, Harlem Capital Partners. Harlem Capital was founded upon the principle that addressing the... View Details
Keywords: Venture Capital Firm Compensation; Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurial Financing; Black Entrepreneurs; Black Leadership; Black Inventors; Inclusion; Minority-owned Businesses; Race And Ethnicity; Race Characteristics; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Diversity; Race; Gender; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Financial Services Industry; United States
- 2020
- Working Paper
Venture Capitalists and COVID-19
By: Paul A. Gompers, Will Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan and Ilya A. Strebulaev
We survey over 1,000 institutional and corporate venture capitalists (VCs) at more than 900 different firms to learn how their decisions and investments have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We compare their survey answers to those provided by a large sample of... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised November 2024)
- Case
NextView Ventures
By: Jo Tango and Nori Gerardo Lietz
David Beisel, Rob Go, and Lee Hower are non-partners at different-and-established venture capital (VC) firms. They decide to leave their positions to start a new seed-stage VC firm. The case covers the genesis of the firm, the formulation of its strategy and... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
How Resilient Is Venture-Backed Innovation? Evidence from Four Decades of U.S. Patenting
By: Sabrina T. Howell, Josh Lerner, Ramana Nanda and Richard Townsend
Despite theoretical predictions to the contrary, corporate innovation is strongly pro-cyclical. In this paper, we compare innovation in the economy as a whole to that of firms backed by venture capital (VC), a source of capital associated with the most impactful young... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
EyeControl: Inspiring Communication
By: Paul A. Gompers and Danielle Golan
Eye-controlled communication device startup EyeControl was founded in Tel Aviv, Israel in 2016 by cofounders with a shared personal connection to locked-in syndrome—a neurological disorder that left sufferers cognitively sound, yet paralyzed, with the exception of eye... View Details
- February 2020
- Case
Seso Global: Building a Blockchain-enabled Property Marketplace in Nigeria
By: Boris Vallee and Yang (Dolly) Yu
The mutual aspiration of addressing the housing shortage and improving real estate market efficiency led Daniel and Phillip to co-found Seso Global in 2017. Seso Global developed a unique integrated platform to streamline and rationalize the process of acquiring and... View Details
- January 2020
- Article
How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?
By: Paul A. Gompers, William Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan and Ilya A. Strebulaev
We survey 885 institutional venture capitalists (VCs) at 681 firms to learn how they make decisions across eight areas: deal sourcing, investment selection, valuation, deal structure, post-investment value-added, exits, internal firm organization, and relationships... View Details
- October 2019
- Case
Harlem Capital: Changing the Face of Entrepreneurship (A)
By: George Serafeim
Jarrid Tingle and Henri Pierre-Jacques had spent the summer between their first and second years of their Harvard Business School MBA program fund raising for their start-up venture capital (VC) firm, Harlem Capital Partners. Harlem Capital was founded upon the... View Details
Keywords: Impact Investing; Gender Bias; Gender Inequality; Minority Representation; Entrepreneurial Finance; Investment Management; Investing; Inequality; Race And Ethnicity; Black Entrepreneurs; Black Inventors; Black Leadership; Venture Investing; Fund Raising; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Diversity; Gender; Race; Equality and Inequality; Equity; Mission and Purpose; Investment Funds; Financial Services Industry; United States
- October 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Dulcie Madden (A)—Growth or Exit?
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Christopher Payton and Shweta Bagai
This is part of a three-case series that follows Dulcie Madden's journey as a founder over five years. Case (A) is about managing growth and cash flow; Case (B) is about the exit decision and conditions on a sale; Case (C) shows Madden dealing with adversity and the... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Family; Family Conflicts; Founders' Agreements; Growth And Development; Hardware; VC; Scaling; Start-up; Female Ceo; Risk Assessment; Entrepreneurship; Growth Management; Equity; Cash Flow; Success; Failure; Acquisition; Business Model; Information Technology; Valuation; Family and Family Relationships; Information Infrastructure; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Technology Industry; United States
- October 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Supplement
Dulcie Madden (B)—A Difficult Choice
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
This is part of a three-case series that follows Dulcie Madden's journey as a founder over five years. Case (A) is about managing growth and cash flow; Case (B) is about the exit decision and conditions on a sale; Case (C) shows Madden dealing with adversity and the... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Family; Family Conflicts; Founders' Agreements; Growth And Development; Hardware; VC; Scaling; Start-up; Female Ceo; Risk Assessment; Entrepreneurship; Growth Management; Cash Flow; Equity; Success; Failure; Acquisition; Business Model; Information Technology; Valuation; Family and Family Relationships; Information Infrastructure
- July 2019
- Case
Instabeat—One More Lap?
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Nicole Tempest Keller and Alpana Thapar
This case follows Lebanese entrepreneur, Hind Hobeika, an engineer and competitive swimmer who spends seven years trying to launch a wearable heartrate monitor and motion sensor to help swimmers track their performance while swimming. While the Beirut-based... View Details
- 2019
- Book
VC: An American History
By: Tom Nicholas
An exploration of venture financing in America, from its origins in the whaling industry to the rise of Silicon Valley, that shows how venture capital (VC) created an epicenter for the development of high-tech innovation. The VC industry arose from the United States’... View Details
- 2019
- Article
An Empirical Study of Rich Subgroup Fairness for Machine Learning
By: Michael J Kearns, Seth Neel, Aaron Leon Roth and Zhiwei Steven Wu
Kearns et al. [2018] recently proposed a notion of rich subgroup fairness intended to bridge the gap between statistical and individual notions of fairness. Rich subgroup fairness picks a statistical fairness constraint (say, equalizing false positive rates across... View Details