Publications

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January 2025
Case

Untapped Global: Financing Africa’s Missing Middle

By: Raymond Kluender and Emanuele Colonnelli

In November 2024, Jim Chu, founder and CEO of Untapped Global, faced mounting internal tensions over the company’s strategic direction. Untapped had developed a data-driven revenue-based financing (RBF) model to address the “missing middle” problem—the $5.2 trillion... View Details

December 2020
Supplement

Video Interview with Pandwe Gibson

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter and Joyce J. Kim

Four diverse women entrepreneurs launched their ventures in a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem that was part of a shift to a creative technology-driven economy for Miami. Although Miami was rated the #1 U.S. city for startups in 2017, the region contained structural... View Details

Keywords: Female Entrepreneur; Entrepreneurial Ecosystems; Sexism; Racism; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Diversity; Gender; Race; Prejudice and Bias; City; Culture; Miami

May 2012 (Revised October 2012)
Case

H-Soft Mumbai

By: Ramana Nanda

Siddharth Kapoor, the Founder and CEO of H-Soft Mumbai reflected on his meeting as he walked out of VC Ventures' offices in Mumbai. After a few months of intensely pitching his startup to several different investors, he finally had a term sheet in hand. Despite this... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Venture Capital Term Sheet; India; Business Startups; Investment; Venture Capital; Contracts; Partners and Partnerships; Entrepreneurship; Negotiation Offer; Decision Making

December 2006 (Revised January 2007)
Case

Chief Timothy Adeola Odutola and Nigeria's Manufacturing Sector

By: Nitin Nohria, Anthony Mayo, Foluke Otudeko and Mark Benson

Chief Timothy Adeola Odutola was an important contributor to Nigeria's manufacturing sector, creating a multimillion-dollar conglomerate including three factories, a retail franchise, a cattle ranch, a 5,000-acre plantation, a sawmill, and an exporting business before... View Details

Keywords: History; Business Conglomerates; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Success; Leadership Style; Business History; Market Entry and Exit; Personal Development and Career; Business Startups; Manufacturing Industry; Nigeria

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18 Mar 2014
First Look

First Look: March 18

Second, we compare patenting by venture‐backed startups and incumbent firms. Using a variety of measures, we find that VC‐backed startups are engaged in more novel and more highly cited innovations compared... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2021 (Revised May 2021)
Case

SafeGraph: Selling Data as a Service

By: Ramana Nanda, Abhishek Nagaraj and Allison Ciechanover

Set in January 2021, the CEO of SafeGraph, a four-year-old startup that sold Data as a Service, looked to the future. His aim was to become the most trusted source for data about a physical place. The company provided points of interest (POI) and foot traffic data on... View Details

Keywords: Data As A Service; Monetization; Pricing; Business Startups; Analytics and Data Science; Consumer Behavior; Analysis; Business Model; Health Pandemics; Information Industry; United States

October 2020 (Revised April 2021)
Case

Women Entrepreneurs and Tech Ecosystems: One City, Two Realities, and Four Diverse Women

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joyce J. Kim

Four diverse women entrepreneurs launched their ventures in a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem that was part of a shift to a creative technology-driven economy for Miami. Although Miami was rated the #1 U.S. city for startups in 2017, the region contained structural... View Details

Keywords: Female Entrepreneur; Entrepreneurial Ecosystems; Inclusion; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Racism; Sexism; Start-up; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Diversity; Gender; Race; Prejudice and Bias; Innovation and Invention; City; Culture; Miami

February 2024
Case

Vespucci Partners: The New World of Venture Capital in Hungary

By: Paul A. Gompers, Tonia Labruyere and Emilie Billaud

Julia Sohajda was the young, female founding partner of the Hungarian VC firm Vespucci Partners, which focused on investing at seed stage into Hungarian deep tech startups and prepare them for a launch in the U.S market. Vespucci's first fund had largely been comprised... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Business Startups; Investment Funds; Financing and Loans; Entrepreneurship; Financial Services Industry; Hungary; United States

30 Oct 2019
Blog Post

Candidates Seeking Opportunities After Graduation: Lessons Learned

again, concentrating on roles that were related to his own background in supply chain management and business development. Confident that potential employers would appreciate his previous experience with Google and Google X, Matt felt at... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

21 Apr 2015
First Look

First Look: April 21

private equity investments suggest that the results are not driven by reverse causality. These patterns are not driven solely by common law nations such as the United Kingdom and United States, but also hold in Continental Europe. April 2015 Harvard View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel & Sean Silverthorne

04 Apr 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, April 4

businesses have led the venture capital model to adapt in fundamental ways over the prior decade. We both document and provide a framework to understand the changes in the investment strategy of VCs in recent years—an increased prevalence... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2011 (Revised September 2014)
Case

Moda Operandi: A New Style of Fashion Retail

By: Mukti Khaire

Moda Operandi is a startup in the fashion industry. The firm organizes online trunk shows of designers' collections, allowing its members to directly order clothes from the collections shown in Fashion Weeks all over the world. Moda Operandi conveys the preorders to... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Distribution Channels; Internet and the Web; Design; Fashion Industry; Retail Industry

September 2021 (Revised December 2021)
Case

Spire, the CubeSat Revolution, and the Government as a Space Data Customer

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Mehak Sarang and Brendan L. Rosseau

This case outlines the rise of Spire Global, a young space company using CubeSats to provide weather data and weather prediction services. In addition to tracing the evolution of a space startup from novel idea to publicly-traded company, the case also examines the... View Details

Keywords: Space; Government Contracting; Remote Sensing; Satellites; Business Startups; Public Sector; Cost vs Benefits; Competition; Weather; Forecasting and Prediction

Often downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face: should they go it alone, or bring in... View Details

August 2024
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

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Mission and Purpose; Health Care and Treatment; Technological Innovation; Business Strategy; Health Industry; Technology Industry

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

20 Aug 2021
Blog Post

Is the MBA Worth It? Hear What Recent HBS Grads Have to Say

How do you know if an MBA is worth it? We asked recent HBS alumni to reflect on their time at—and after—HBS. Here are their thoughts on the business school experience, the value of an MBA degree, and how to best prepare for HBS. Lindsay... View Details

October 2022
Case

Beam Dental (A)

By: Rembrand Koning and Alicia Dadlani

In May 2014, Alex Frommeyer, cofounder and CEO of Kentucky-based Beam Dental, a seed-stage startup that developed connected toothbrushes that tracked brushing habits, needed to decide which strategy to pitch to a venture capital firm. The first pitch deck played to the... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Business Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Financing and Loans; Presentations; Product Development; Insurance Industry; United States; Kentucky; Ohio

July 2024
Case

Jacqueline Cook at Vendasta: Debating an IPO

By: Reza Satchu, Tom Quinn and Andrew Kosc

In May 2021, after a surge in demand for digital services that prompted high valuations for startups across the Canadian tech sector, Saskatchewan-based Vendasta entered the final stages of the initial public offering (IPO) process. COO Jacqueline Cook had invested her... View Details