Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(694)
- Faculty Publications (276)
- November 2011 (Revised December 2013)
- Case
Accretive Health
By: William A. Sahlman and Evan Richardson
Mary Tolan, CEO Accretive Health, examines whether to expand the company's operations in hospital revenue cycle management into the field of Total Cost of Care management. View Details
- October 2011
- Case
CSN Stores
By: William A. Sahlman and Neil Tolaney
In March 2011, CSN Stores is a collection of nearly 200 Internet retail websites, including Cookware.com, Strollers.com, and Luggage.com. Co-founders Niraj Shah and Steve Conine were considering making a major investment to build brand equity at the corporate level. View Details
- October 2011 (Revised November 2011)
- Case
Verengo Solar Plus!
By: William A. Sahlman, Joseph B. Lassiter III and Liz Kind
In the three years since Bishop and Button purchased Verengo in a leveraged buyout (LBO), the company had gone through dramatic changes. Initially a residential windows and insulation firm, after the economic recession of 2008 the company switched gears and began... View Details
- September 2011
- Case
AXA Private Equity: The Diana Investment
By: Michael J. Roberts and William A. Sahlman
The case focuses on an investment made by AXA Private Equity, a French manufacturer of food ingredients. The investment is made at the height of the financial markets, and financed with significant debt. Soon thereafter, the financial crisis impacted the company's... View Details
- September 2011 (Revised July 2012)
- Case
Khosla Ventures: Biofuels Gain Liquidity
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman, Alison Berkley Wagonfeld and Evan Richardson
Samir Kaul, a Partner at Khosla Ventures, looked out his office window. It was late June, 2011, and like almost every day in Menlo Park, the sun was shining. Kaul was reflecting on what had been a very positive 10 months in the venture capital business. Over that span,... View Details
- February 2011
- Case
Chegg: Textbook Rental Takes Flight
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, William A. Sahlman and Evan W. Richardson
In late 2010, Silicon Valley-based Chegg, the leading online college textbook rental company, is scaling rapidly. The case recounts Chegg's history from its origins as a distant competitor to Craigslist in college classified listings through a pivot into textbook... View Details
- 2011
- Article
How Should the Graduate Economics Core be Changed?
By: Vincent Pons, Jose Miguel Abito, Katarina Borovickova, Hays Golden, Jacob Goldin, Matthew A. Masten, Miguel Morin, Alexander Poirier, Israel Romem, Tyler Williams and Chamna Yoon
The authors present suggestions by graduate students from a range of economics departments for improving the first-year core sequence in economics. The students identified a number of elements that should be added to the core: more training in building microeconomic... View Details
- December 2010
- Background Note
Risk and Reward in Venture Capital
This note describes the payoff structure of investment in individual venture capital–backed companies and in venture capital portfolios. Venture Capital investments are characterized by high failure rate (0ver 50%) and a small number of given successes (greater than... View Details
- December 2010
- Article
Management and the Financial Crisis (We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us...)
The financial crisis of 2008-2009 has revealed that our broad model of corporate governance is broken, independent of the shortcomings in the regulatory system. Managers and boards of directors in scores of systemically important firms failed to protect employees,... View Details
- November 2010
- Case
Gilt Groupe
By: Michael J. Roberts, William A. Sahlman and Tamara Obradov
The case explores decisions faced by Gilt Groupe co-founders in 2009 regarding how rapidly to grow, which growth strategies to pursue and how much capital to raise. View Details
- November 2010
- Case
The Firestorm: Super Angelgate
By: William A. Sahlman and Evan Wade Richardson
An overview of key documents surrounding the 2010 “Angelgate” meetings. View Details
- November 2010 (Revised August 2016)
- Case
The Changing Face of Angel Investing
By: William A. Sahlman and Evan Richardson
Angel investors Ram Shriram, Mike Maples, Eric Paley, James Geshweiler, and Jim Southern discuss their investment philosophies and the changing landscape of angel investing. Questions include: • How has angel investing changed in the last few years? • How do you... View Details
- November 2010
- Case
Bling Nation
By: William A. Sahlman and Liz Kind
Bling Nation, a Palo Alto, CA startup, was founded in 2007 as a mobile payment service provider that bypassed industry participants such as Visa and MasterCard. Bling Nation partnered with local community banks and merchants in small towns. The banks provided their... View Details
Keywords: Culture
- November 2010
- Case
Spudnik, Inc.
By: William A. Sahlman and Elizabeth A. Kind
This case describes the plan to finance a revolutionary new television set manufacturing business in late 2009. Yatin Mundkur, a venture capitalist at Artiman Ventures, has recruited a team of veteran eecutives from the optical disk drive business, to design large... View Details
- November 2010 (Revised April 2011)
- Case
WiTricity: Electricity cuts the cord
By: William A. Sahlman and Evan Wade Richardson
Eric Giler, WiTricity CEO, must decide how to grow a company based around an untested but potentially ground-breaking technology for wireless electricity transmission. View Details
- October 2010
- Case
innocent
By: William A. Sahlman and Harry Wake
This case describes a set of issues confronting the founders of innocent, a 10-year old beverage company that dominated the UK smoothie market. The team must decide how to proceed with expansion of the product line and outside the UK and Ireland. They must also decide... View Details
- April 2010
- Teaching Note
Dr. John's Products, Ltd. (TN)
Teaching Note for [803063]. View Details
- November 2009 (Revised August 2010)
- Case
NovoCure Ltd.
By: William A. Sahlman and Sarah Flaherty
Venture capitalist William Doyle must raise $35 million for a portfolio company with a promising, novel cancer therapy, just as global capital markets are imploding in the fall of 2008. NovoCure, Ltd., has developed an electrical-field-based therapy, called Tumor... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Management and the Financial Crisis (We have met the enemy and he is us...)
The financial crisis of 2008-9 has revealed that our broad model of corporate governance is broken, independent of the shortcomings in the regulatory system. Managers and boards of directors in scores of systemically important firms failed to protect employees,... View Details