Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,736)
- Faculty Publications (501)
- October 2023 (Revised November 2023)
- Case
Sprout Solutions
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Bonnie Yining Cao and Dawn H. Lau
Husband-and-wife co-founders Patrick and Alexandria Gentry had built Sprout Solutions to be one of the biggest Software-as-a-Service human resources management platforms in the Philippines, guided by the mission to "impact the life of every Filipino by improving... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
Loris
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Das Narayandas, Stacy Straaberg and David Lane
In December 2022, Loris’s executive team considered their go-to-market strategy. Loris was an artificial intelligence (AI) software startup for the customer service industry with two products on the market: 1) Agent Assist which provided customer service agents (CSAs)... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Bringing Science to Market: Knowledge Foundations, Inventor-Founders, and Performance
By: Justine Boudou and Maria Roche
In this paper, we examine how a startup’s knowledge foundations—embedded in its
core technology—influence its performance in the exit market. Using a dataset of 1,006
biomedicine startups founded between 2005 and 2015, we focus on two key factors: (1)
the degree of... View Details
- September 2023 (Revised November 2023)
- Case
Seeds of Innovation: GALY's Quest to Cultivate the Future of Agriculture in the Lab
By: George Serafeim and Michael Norris
In 2023, Luciano Bueno, CEO and founder of plant cell culture agriculture company GALY, was considering the best path forward for his company as he planned to pitch Series B investors. GALY, founded in 2019, aimed to produce cotton and other crops from cells grown in... View Details
- September 2023
- Case
Ada: Cultivating Investors
By: Reza Satchu and Patrick Sanguineti
Mike Murchison, co-founder and CEO of Ada, has an enviable dilemma. Launched in 2016 by Murchison and his co-founder David Hariri, Ada is an AI-native company that aims to revolutionize how businesses approach customer service. The company has already attracted a buzz,... View Details
- September 2023
- Case
DocSend: A Path off the Plateau?
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Jeffrey Huizinga
Recounts how the leaders of DocSend, an early-stage startup that offered tools for sharing files online, searched for a viable business model and weighed tradeoffs in transitioning from a sales-led to a product-led "go-to-market" approach. View Details
- September 2023 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
TetraScience: Noise and Signal
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
In 2019, TetraScience CEO “Spin” Wang needed advice. Five years earlier, he had cofounded a startup that saw early success with a hardware product designed to help laboratory scientists in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical spaces more easily collect data from... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Organization; Restructuring; Forecasting and Prediction; Digital Platforms; Analytics and Data Science; AI and Machine Learning; Organizational Structure; Network Effects; Competitive Strategy; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States; Boston
- September 2023 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Atomwise: Strategic Opportunities in AI for Pharma
By: Satish Tadikonda
Abraham Heifets and his co-founder, Izhar Wallach, had founded Atomwise to develop i) an AI engine to transform drug discovery by creating better medicines faster, and ii) a machine learning-based discovery engine that combined the power of convolutional neural... View Details
- September 2023 (Revised July 2024)
- Case
Honest Jobs: A Path to Redemption
By: Paul A. Gompers and Jeffrey Barkas
Founded by a formerly incarcerated job seeker, Honest Jobs' mission is to be the hub where people with criminal records come to build careers and employers come to find great talent. Honest Jobs faced early challenges as a two-sided platform for justice-involved job... View Details
- September 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
RightHand Robotics: Choosing the First Market
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Stacy Straaberg
In early 2015, RightHand Robotics’s (RHR) leadership faced several decisions in commercializing the startup’s robotic picking solution. RHR’s central product was the RightPick integrated robotic picking system which featured a robotic arm, a three-fingered robotic hand... View Details
- September 2023 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
ReMo Energy: Sizing Up Investors
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Tom Quinn
In 2023, executives with ReMo Energy (founded 2020) were deciding which size ammonia plant to build as their first project. Their innovative model produced ammonia—useful for making fertilizer and for energy storage—from renewable energy, and they had received funding... View Details
Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Business Startups; Cost vs Benefits; Design; Energy Conservation; Energy Generation; Renewable Energy; Venture Capital; Investment Return; Goods and Commodities; Size; Infrastructure; Risk and Uncertainty; Science-Based Business; Commercialization; Technological Innovation; Green Technology Industry; Green Technology Industry; Green Technology Industry; United States; Boston
- September 2023
- Case
Diamond Standard
By: Lauren H. Cohen, Zhaoheng Gong and Grace Headinger
Cormac Kinney, Founder and CEO of Diamond Standard, was on a mission to transform the U.S. diamond market through unlocking the precious gems as market-traded assets. As a serial FinTech entrepreneur, he hoped to add an additional service to his vault: Carats. The... View Details
Keywords: Tokenization; Fintech; Cryptocurrency; Liquidity; Digital; Rare Earth Minerals; Decentralized; Crypto Economy; Financial Product; Metals; Diamonds; Commodity; Assets; Financial Instruments; Financial Institutions; Financial Markets; Investment; Technological Innovation; Natural Resources; Business Startups; Currency; Financial Services Industry; United States
- August 2023
- Case
Beamery: Using Skills and AI to Modernize HR
By: Boris Groysberg, Alexis Lefort, Susan Pinckney and Carolina Bartunek
Unicorn human relationships startup Beamery evaluates it's growth versus depth strategy as its strategic partners and customers could become future competitors in a quickly changing AI based human resources and talent management industry View Details
Keywords: Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Competency and Skills; Experience and Expertise; Talent and Talent Management; Customers; Nationality; Learning; Entrepreneurship; Employee Relationship Management; Recruitment; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Values and Beliefs; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Analytics and Data Science; Applications and Software; Disruptive Innovation; Technological Innovation; Job Offer; Job Search; Job Design and Levels; Employment; Human Capital; Europe; United Kingdom; United States
- August 2023
- Case
WayCool: Reimagining the Food Supply Chain
By: Paul Gompers and Kairavi Dey
Founded in 2015, WayCool, is an Indian agri-tech start-up that built a B2B operation acquiring fruits and vegetables from product-specific agriculture companies and small-holding farmers. It sold them to business customers, such as local retail stores, restaurants, and... View Details
- August 2023
- Case
Kariyer.net: Recruiting AI
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Fares Khrais and Namrata Arora
In 2017, Fatih Uysal (AMP 2021) became CEO of Kariyer.net. By then, the business was already the industry leading online job board in Turkey. However, faced with stalling growth, a turbulent macroenvironment, and growing competition from international players, Uysal... View Details
Keywords: Online Technology; Marketing; Websites; Artificial Intelligence; Innovation; Two-sided Platforms; Internet and the Web; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Job Search; Employment; Transformation; Volatility; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Management Practices and Processes; Business Growth and Maturation; Competitive Strategy; Business Startups; Talent and Talent Management; Cost vs Benefits; Macroeconomics; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Emerging Markets; Digital Platforms; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Middle East; Turkey
- August 2023 (Revised August 2023)
- Case
Sky Therapeutics: Innovating in Digital Therapeutics
By: Satish Tadikonda, Olivia Reszczynski and William Marks
Shad Faraz and Alex Youssef were intrigued by the opportunities in the relatively new area of Digital Therapeutics. Despite initial successes, early entrants had struggled with reimbursement and revenue-predictability challenges. However, venture investors still... View Details
- July 2023
- Case
Honeycomb
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Kumba Sennaar
Honeycomb, an audio app enabling seniors to record stories and save family memories, suddenly draws interest from a younger user demographic. The co-founders consider pivoting to better serve this new user demographic. How should they think about strategy, brand, and... View Details
- July 2023
- Supplement
Honeycomb (B): Jumping on The Generative AI Bandwagon?
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Kumba Sennaar
Honeycomb, an audio app enabling users to record stories and save family memories, considers pivoting to embrace generative AI. What should the co-founders business model look like if they pursued this new direction? View Details
- July 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
Clair
By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Marcos Quirno
Clair was founded with a simple mission: to expedite America’s workers access to their hard-earned wages. In the headwinds of the COVID-19 pandemic, the startup had successfully raised a seed round of $4.5 million, and within two years the earned wage access (EWA)... View Details
- July 2023 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
Vytal: Packaging-as-a-Service
By: George Serafeim, Michael W. Toffel, Lena Duchene and Daniela Beyersdorfer
The Germany-based startup Vytal operated the largest digital-native reusable packaging-as-a-service network globally, having raised nearly €15 million, established a large network of restaurant partners, and prevented the use of millions of single-use take-out food... View Details
Keywords: Climate Risk; Digital; Platform Strategies; Data; Packaging; Sustainability; Start-up; Startup; Entrepreneur; Impact; Circular; Growth Strategy; Innovation; Environmental Sustainability; Innovation and Invention; Business Growth and Maturation; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Startups; Resource Allocation; Risk Management; Adoption; Strategy; Performance Productivity; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Supply Chain; Distribution; Entrepreneurship; Climate Change; Green Technology Industry; Green Technology Industry; Green Technology Industry; Germany; Europe