Startup Marketing - Publications - Faculty & Research

February 2024 (Revised January 2025)
Case

AGENTS.inc: Pathways to Growth at an AI Startup

By: Frank Nagle, Manuel Hoffmann, Karoline Ströhlein and Susan Pinckney

The case describes the history of AGENTS.inc. Despite being a small startup, with only four employees, that had never had a funding round, the company boasted an impressive client portfolio including multiple Fortune 500 companies. While AGENTS.inc had been an early... View Details

Citation

Educators

Purchase

27 Jul 2020
Working Paper Summaries

The Evolution of CEO Compensation in Venture Capital-Backed Startups

Keywords: by Michael Ewens, Ramana Nanda, and Christopher Stanton

October 2018
Case

BreezoMeter: Making Air Pollution Data Actionable

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Allison M. Ciechanover and Margot Eiran

The case focuses on an Israeli startup that provides actionable air pollution data and forecasts. The company has over 50 enterprise customers and its tool reached a million people daily in 67 countries. The co-founders wrestle with which markets and customers to focus... View Details

Keywords: Startups; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Pollutants; Analytics and Data Science; Sales; Marketing; Decision Choices and Conditions; Technology Industry; Israel; United States

Citation

Educators

Purchase

2024
Working Paper

Catalysts for Climate Solutions: Corporate Responses to Venture Capital Financing of Climate-tech Startups

By: Shirley Lu, George Serafeim and Simon Xu

We study whether incumbent firms increase their product focus on climate solutions in response to venture capital (VC) financing of climate-tech startups. Using large language models to measure a firm's focus on climate solutions, we find that incumbents in similar... View Details

Keywords: Climate Finance; Climate Change; Technological Innovation; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Private Equity; Environmental Sustainability; Business Startups

Citation

SSRN

Read Now

September 1995 (Revised October 1995)
Case

Transcape Systems: Creating a Market

Entrepreneurial companies must overcome substantial barriers to create markets for innovative products in industries reluctant to embrace change. Transcape Systems faces this callenge as it attempts to create a market for interactive multimedia software in the... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Applications and Software; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Product Marketing; Information Technology Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Health Industry

Citation

Find at Harvard

January 2000 (Revised June 2000)
Case

Alloy.com: Marketing to Generation Y

By: John A. Deighton and Gil McWilliams

A profitable dot com company? Alloy.com retails clothing to teens by catalog. Alloy uses a Web site to convert prospects and build community. The result is a business with the economics of a direct marketer and the market capitalization of an Internet start-up. The... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Internet and the Web; Business and Community Relations; Partners and Partnerships; Customer Relationship Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry; Consumer Products Industry

Citation

Educators

Purchase

August 2019 (Revised March 2023)
Case

Rand Fishkin at Moz (A)

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

In 2016, senior management at Moz, a venture capital–backed startup providing software tools for digital marketing professionals, must decide how to address a looming cash flow crisis precipitated by failed efforts to broaden its product line. Seattle-based Moz had... View Details

Keywords: Startups; Scaling; Entrepreneurship; Failure; Business Startups; Diversification; Growth Management; Technology Industry

Citation

Educators

Purchase

31 Mar 2022
Blog Post

Setting Interns Up for Success at a Startup

packaging waste throughout the supply chain. With a wide range of opportunities available to the business as they expand, a Business Intelligence function was formed at Mori in 2021 with a critical mandate – build a robust system and conduct analysis to identify the... View Details

April 2015 (Revised March 2017)
Case

Instacart and the New Wave of Grocery Startups

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

Instacart is testing an Uber-style solution to the challenge of building a home-delivered grocery business. It is backed by $220 million of venture funding. Will this model succeed where businessses like Webvan failed? What are the questions that this exploratory... View Details

Keywords: Food Retailing; Outsourced Grocery Delivery; Online Ordering; Dynamic Pricing; Data Analytics; Marketing Strategy; Food; Distribution Channels; Business Startups; Food and Beverage Industry; California

Citation

Educators

Purchase

December 2014 (Revised May 2015)
Supplement

Growth Hacking at Bazaart (B)

By: Jeffrey Bussgang and Matthew G. Preble

"Growth Hacking at Bazaart (B)" provides a brief update of what has transpired at Bazaart since the timing of "Growth Hacking at Bazaart (A)". View Details

Keywords: Growth Hacking; Customer Acquisition; Startup Marketing; Startup Nation; Business Startups; Social Marketing; Marketing; Growth and Development; Customers; Fashion Industry; Technology Industry; Israel

Citation

Purchase

19 Oct 2022
Op-Ed

Cofounder Courtship: How to Find the Right Mate—for Your Startup

early on—rookie mistakes can set back (or kill) a business before it’s barely out of the gate. Read Khalid Halim’s thoughts on Hypergrowth and the Law of Startup Physics for more on this point. “Unless you are doing hard science that is... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Austin

31 Mar 2022
Blog Post

Setting Interns Up for Success at Your Startup

packaging waste throughout the supply chain. With a wide range of opportunities available to the business as they expand, a Business Intelligence function was formed at Mori in 2021 with a critical mandate – build a robust system and conduct analysis to identify the... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship

21 Sep 2023
Blog Post

Hands-on Learning About Global Markets

The challenge posed to students in HBS’s FIELD Global Immersion (FGI) course sounds a bit like a premise for reality TV: Travel to unfamiliar markets where you might not speak the language, work in teams with students you might not know,... View Details

April 2020
Teaching Note

Glossier: Co-Creating a Cult Brand with a Digital Community

By: Jill Avery

Teaching Note for HBS No. 519-022. Flush with cash from its Series C fundraise, cult beauty brand Glossier considers its next phase of growth, facing critical decisions on how to allocate its capital to support various marketing communications and distribution... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Crowdsourcing; CRM; Startup; Direct-to-consumer; DTC; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior; Customer Relationship Management; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Social Media; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; United States

Citation

Purchase

October 1981 (Revised June 1982)
Case

Concept Devices, Inc.: International Market Entry

Concept is a highly touted startup venture in distributed data processing computers. The company has only made one sale to date, but has an order backlog for its unique product and expects an almost vertical growth curve. The company has been courted seriously by... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Business Startups; Computer Industry; France; United Kingdom

Citation

Educators

Purchase

23 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

One More Way the Startup World Hampers Women Entrepreneurs

and the Direction of Startup Innovation. “You’re missing out on information from a huge swath of the population,” says Rembrand Koning, an assistant professor in the Strategy Unit, who wrote the paper along with Sarofim-Rock Professor of... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

25 Apr 2023
News

Class of 2022 Startups Sweep Alumni New Venture Competition

voted Crowd Favorite, is the brainchild of cofounders Wood and Royle, who met at HBS in the Startup Bootcamp program. Tilden is aiming to change the game in the nonalcoholic beverage market by producing a... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

August 2018 (Revised October 2020)
Case

Tailor Brands: Artificial Intelligence-Driven Branding

By: Jill Avery

Using proprietary artificial intelligence technology, startup Tailor Brands set out to democratize branding by allowing small businesses to create their brand identities by automatically generating logos in just minutes at minimal cost with no branding or design skills... View Details

Citation

Educators

Purchase

01 Sep 2023
News

Hands-on Learning About Global Markets

A certificate of appreciation was presented to Ellie Care representatives Francisco Garcia Zavaleta (COO) and Gervasio Videla Dorna (cofounder and CEO), at left, and to Patricio Alba (cofounder and CIO), far right, by HBS students Maxwell Nii Laryea, third from left,... View Details

Keywords: Jennifer Gillespie

July 2023
Case

DayTwo: Going to Market with Gut Microbiome (Abridged)

By: Ayelet Israeli

DayTwo is a young Israeli startup that applies research on the gut microbiome and machine learning algorithms to deliver personalized nutritional recommendations to its users in order to minimize blood sugar spikes after meals. After a first year of trial rollout in... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Nutrition; Market Entry and Exit; Product Marketing; Distribution Channels

Citation

Educators

Purchase