startup - Publications - Faculty & Research

November 22, 2022
Article

Why Startups Should Embrace Radical Transparency

After high-profile startup failures like FTX or Theranos, investors, employees, customers, and policymakers all ask what might have been done differently to ensure accountability and prevent mismanagement. But startup founders should join that list: It’s in their... View Details

Keywords: Start-up; Business Startups; Entrepreneurial Finance; Corporate Accountability

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01 Apr 1997
News

An Orchestral Startup

with Yoo hiring topflight young musicians and Lim handling the business end, Metamorphosen came to life with a startup budget of $75,000 raised from charitable donations (the orchestra is a tax-exempt entity), corporate sponsors, program... View Details

Keywords: Linda Goodspeed

17 Mar 2016
News

The 124-Year-Old Startup

Fifteen years after taking over the top spot from “Neutron Jack” Welch, Jeff Immelt (MBA 1982) talks to Bloomberg Businessweek for a wide-ranging consideration of his tenure at the $122 billion giant, including the company’s latest retooling as a software View Details

July–August 2025
Article

Beefing IT Up for Your Investor? Engagement with Open Source Communities, Innovation, and Startup Funding: Evidence from GitHub

By: Annamaria Conti, Christian Peukert and Maria P. Roche

We study the engagement of nascent firms with open source communities and its implications for innovation and attracting funding. To do so, we link data on 160,065 U.S. startups from Crunchbase to their activities on the open source software development platform... View Details

Keywords: Startups; Knowledge; Open Source Communities; GitHub; Machine Learning; Innovation; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Information Technology; Strategy

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November 2013
Article

Investment Cycles and Startup Innovation

By: Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

We find that VC-backed firms receiving their initial investment in hot markets are more likely to go bankrupt, but conditional on going public are valued higher on the day of their IPO, have more patents, and have more citations to their patents. Our results suggest... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Market Cycles; Financing Risk; Risk and Uncertainty; Venture Capital; Investment; Innovation and Invention

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20 Aug 2021
News

Why Startups Fail

06 Sep 2021
News

Tom Eisenmann: Startups and their Wrong Decisions

11 Jan 2021
News

Is A/B Testing Effective? Evidence from 35,000 Startups

17 Apr 2017
Video

HBS Startup Bootcamp

01 Jun 2014
News

Spring Training for Startups

April was a good month for startups at HBS, with three events connecting expert entrepreneurs with student and alumni founders. The HBS Rock 100 Entrepreneurs' Summit featured conversations with industry leaders like Care.com founder and... View Details

2025
Working Paper

Code-Washing: Evidence from Open-Source Blockchain Startups

By: Ofir Gefen, Daniel Rabetti, Yannan Sun and Che Zhang

This study examines startups' management of source code repositories, distinguishing authentic developers ("code-producers''), from those inflating activity to mislead investors ("code-washers''). Using global blockchain startup and GitHub data, we find that... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Open Source Distribution; Business Startups

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SSRN

07 Nov 2011
Working Paper Summaries

Investment Cycles and Startup Innovation

Keywords: by Ramana Nanda & Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

07 Mar 2019
News

Digital-Health Startup Livongo Eyes 2019 IPO

Startup or Established Company? Which Is Best for You?

What are the tradeoffs between going to a startup versus joining a mature company? Having done both, several times, I get this question all the time. There are many things to consider and lots of “it depends” when it comes to where you are in your career, where... View Details

13 Oct 2017
News

So, You Want to Join a Startup

06 May 2019
News

Startup Talk in Chicago

venture community and startup ecosystem.” The HBSCC hosts a wide variety of business and civic leaders for the benefit of alumni, according to Club President Steve Wasko (MBA 1986). “Penny Pritzker is at the pinnacle of both of these... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley; Pritzker; Air Transportation; Transportation

07 Feb 2018
News

Helping Startups Give Back

“If you really want your company to be associated with giving back and having a social mission,” says Janie Goldstein (MBA 1991), “it needs to be baked in from the start.” But while most startups want to be philanthropic, Goldstein, the... View Details

04 Nov 2019
News

A Home for Startups

Ankit Samdariya (MBA 2013) is CEO of The Hive, a collaborative workspace firm in Chennai, India. In this video, he discusses how the company is serving the rapidly growing trend toward collaborative work among Indian startups and small... View Details

Keywords: work space