Publications

12 Apr 2016
First Look

April 12, 2016

customers rather than take possession of and responsibility for the products or services in question, they have inherently low cost structures and fat gross margins. They are highly defensible once... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 1993 (Revised April 1998)
Case

Viscotech, Inc.

Focuses on the efforts of a small company to raise funds in a variety of ways. In the course of its efforts to raise equity capital, the company commits a number of SEC violations. The case includes an example of both a poor, aggressive offering circular and a tightly... View Details

Keywords: Capital; Equity; Financing and Loans; Lawfulness

18 Jun 2020
Blog Post

Black MBA Students Pen Letters to the HBS Community: Letter 3/5

the solution. In the classroom: We can sometimes feel a burden to speak up about issues of race in the classroom. If we don’t interject, often nothing will be said. We go through mental math: what is the benefit View Details

February 2010 (Revised November 2012)
Case

Indus Towers: Collaborating with Competitors on Infrastructure

By: Ranjay Gulati, Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez, V.G. Narayanan and Rachna Tahilyani

The case describes the formation of Indus Towers, the largest telecom tower company in the world that has a joint venture created to build and manage the passive infrastructure of wireless telecom operators by bringing together three competitors in India's tough... View Details

Keywords: Joint Ventures; Cost Management; Infrastructure; Alliances; Competition; Cooperation; Telecommunications Industry; India

May 2023
Teaching Note

Away: Scaling a DTC Travel Brand

By: Joseph B. Fuller and Jill Avery

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 520-051. Away, a direct-to-consumer, digital native e-commerce seller of travel luggage, is debating how to invest its latest round of venture funding. How quickly could and should Away scale and what were the most promising growth... View Details

Keywords: Distribution; Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Segmentation; Venture Capital; Consumer Products Industry

18 Jul 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, July 18, 2017

to better connections rather than superior skill. Knowing When to Ask: The Cost of Leaning-in By: Exley, Christine L., Muriel Niederle, and Lise Vesterlund Abstract—Gender differences in the propensity to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2008
Case

From xiaonei to hainei: The Quest for the Social Networking Service Market in China

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Michael Shih-Ta Chen and Keith Chi-ho Wong

Wang Xing, the founder of Hainei.com, one of the fastest growing social networking service (SNS) providers in China, was preparing to raise funds from venture capitalists. Since late 2003, Wang had established several Internet startups in China. Xiaonei.com, which he... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Social and Collaborative Networks; Competition; Internet; China

Find at Harvard

January 2014
Technical Note

A Note on Funding Digital Innovation Startups

By: Karim Lakhani, Michael Norris and Andrew Otazo

This note provides information on the state of startup financing in Silicon Valley in 2013. It details different avenues startups have to raise funding, including venture capital, corporate venture capital, angel investors, incubators, and crowdfunding. View Details

Keywords: Startup; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Angel Investors; Accelerator; Crowdfunding; Silicon Valley; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; California

December 2012
Article

On the Efficiency-Fairness Trade-Off

By: Dimitris Bertsimas, Vivek F. Farias and Nikolaos Trichakis

This paper deals with a basic issue: How does one approach the problem of designing the "right" objective for a given resource allocation problem? The notion of what is right can be fairly nebulous; we consider two issues that we see as key: efficiency and fairness. We... View Details

Keywords: Decision Support; Cost vs Benefits; Fairness; Resource Allocation; Performance Efficiency; Air Transportation Industry

Find at Harvard

03 Jun 2008
First Look

First Look: June 3, 2008

in the month of July. A sudden drop in capital market prices for an asset class can be caused by news affecting fundamental values or by a widespread liquidity shock. The implication View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

17 Aug 2010
First Look

First Look: August 17

types of earnings benchmarks. We estimate that marketing actions can be used to boost quarterly net income by up to 5% depending on the depth and duration of promotion. However, there is a price to pay, with... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

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

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Expansion; Capital Structure; Corporate Finance; Growth and Development Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry

24 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: Jan. 24

create net benefits for society but would also involve costs frequently lack the necessary support to be enacted because losses loom larger than gains psychologically. To reduce the harmful consequence of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

08 Apr 2021
Blog Post

HBS Entrepreneurship Immersion - Four Highlights

to start immediately? What’s the bottleneck? Independent Studies: I had the opportunity to work with Professor Jeff Bussgang diving into YCombinator - we work with hundreds of YC companies at Pilot! Finance: At a successful startup, the... View Details

16 Dec 2014
First Look

First Look: December 16

compare those clicks with users' subsequent purchases. Ever-cheaper IT makes this tracking cost effective and routine. In addition, a web of interlocking ad networks trades inventory and offers to show the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Jun 2012
News

Letters to the Editor

Bloomfield Hills, MI A Taxing Question Regarding his My Two Cents column, “My Beautiful Capital Gain,” in the March issue, I’d ask this of Dal LaMagna (MBA 1970): The money you invested was already taxed... View Details

Keywords: Administration of Economic Programs; Administration of Economic Programs; Administration of Economic Programs; Administration of Economic Programs

22 Apr 2008
First Look

First Look: April 22, 2008

207-075 In May 2006, a resident of Key West, Florida had to decide whether to renew his policy to insure against hurricane damage. The policy would cost $13,000 for one year, $5,000 more than what he paid in... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

December 2019
Case

WeWork Files for an IPO

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

For the board of The We Company—better known as WeWork—August 14, 2019, promised to be a pivotal day. It was then that WeWork’s IPO prospectus, known as an S-1 filing, would be made public, giving potential investors, the media, and the general public a window into the... View Details

Keywords: Capital Structure; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Going Public; Leadership; Management; Private Equity; Valuation; Venture Capital; Real Estate Industry; Technology Industry; United States