Publications

19 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

$15 Billion in Five Years: What Data Tells Us About MacKenzie Scott’s Philanthropy

of gifts over time. So many in the nonprofit and philanthropy world wondered how Scott’s nonconforming principles would be expressed in her actual giving. Scott, whose net worth has been estimated to top $40 billion, established the... View Details

Keywords: by Matthew Lee, Brian Trelstad, and Ethan Tran

September 2018 (Revised June 2019)
Case

THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS: Selecting Impact Funds

By: Vikram Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Nathaniel Schwalb

After much internal debate, THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS of Denmark have decided to allocate a small percentage of their investment portfolio to impact investments. Cambridge Associates, one of the leading investment advisory firms in the world, has been engaged to assist... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Mission-Related Investing; Foundations; Investment; Venture Capital; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Investment Funds; Decision Making; Consulting Industry; Financial Services Industry; Denmark; Europe

02 Dec 2019
News

Championing the HBS Fund

Andreas Stavropoulos (MBA 1997) and Christy Dosiou Andreas Stavropoulos and Chrysoula “Christy” Dosiou are steadfast advocates for the HBS Fund. The couple, who were high school sweethearts in their native Greece, see the flexible support that the View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

01 Mar 2019
News

The HBS Fund

emergency personnel—potentially saving more than 10,000 lives annually. RapidSOS participated in the Harvard Innovation Labs’ Venture Incubation Program while co-founder Michael Martin (MBA 2015) was a student at HBS. The startup... View Details

January 2016 (Revised October 2016)
Case

Saudi Aramco and Corporate Venture Capital

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Nathaniel Burbank

Saudi Aramco launched an internal venture capital arm in 2011, which promptly became the world's largest investor in energy related startups. In choosing to proceed, the company's New Business Development unit (NPD) wrestled with a number of challenges. How should the... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Energy Industry; Saudi Arabia

October 1996 (Revised March 1998)
Case

Schroder Ventures: Launch of the Euro Fund

By: Josh Lerner, Kate Bringham and Nick Ferguson

Schroder Ventures is considering launching a pan-European fund in response to investor demand. This will lead to changes in the interactions between the parent organization and the national affiliates. A related question is the extent to which the private equity model... View Details

Keywords: Change; Private Equity; Investment Funds; Multinational Firms and Management; Product Launch; Europe

06 Nov 2000
Research & Ideas

The Determinants of Corporate Venture Capital Success

Corporate-sponsored venture funds first appeared in the 1960s, about two decades after the first flowering of the venture capital industry. Ever since, they have mirrored the... View Details

Keywords: by Paul Gompers & Josh Lerner

October 2019 (Revised January 2020)
Case

NewView Capital and Venture Capital Secondaries

By: Shai Bernstein, Ramana Nanda and Allison Ciechanover

While still a general partner at Silicon Valley–based New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Ravi Viswanathan considered the challenges presented by evolving market dynamics in the venture capital space. Startups were staying private longer, which led to limited partners... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Capital Markets; Private Equity; Strategy

July 2011 (Revised September 2018)
Case

Nashton Partners and Its Search Fund Process

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

Nashton Partners was a search fund founded by two HBS MBA's that raised $500,000 to finance a search for a company that they could purchase and then run for the next five to ten years. The case examines the search fund structure, the two-year search, and two potential... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Capital Structure; Financing and Loans; Investment Funds; Partners and Partnerships

August 2021
Case

Andreessen Horowitz’s Cultural Leadership Fund (A)

By: Anita Elberse, Briana Richardson and Cydni Williams

In May 2020, Chris Lyons, a partner at leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz receives the news that his company has reached a verbal agreement with one of Silicon Valley’s hottest social-media startups to lead its ‘Series A’ funding round, in a deal that... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment; Talent Management; General Management; Inclusion; Talent and Talent Management; Diversity; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Networks; Nonprofit Organizations

17 Mar 2014
News

Impact Investing: Patience, Please

Keywords: venture philanthropy; social enterprise; impact investing; Funds, Trusts, and Other Financial Vehicles; Finance

07 Sep 2021
News

Funding His Purpose

money,” Letelier says, and the grants that typically power nonprofits don’t typically offer organizations the flexibility of the financial products available to for-profit companies, which can mean everything from bootstrapping and commercial bank loans to View Details

December 2003 (Revised December 2004)
Case

Building Hedge Funds at Prospero Capital

This case discusses the issues facing a relatively new and small equity hedge fund as it attempts to expand its investor base. View Details

Keywords: Expansion; Business Startups; Finance; Financial Services Industry

December 2010
Background Note

Risk and Reward in Venture Capital

By: William A. Sahlman

This note describes the payoff structure of investment in individual venture capital–backed companies and in venture capital portfolios. Venture Capital investments are characterized by high failure rate (0ver 50%) and a small number of given successes (greater than... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Venture Capital; Investment Return; Investment Portfolio; Analytics and Data Science; Failure; Performance; Information Technology

May 2023
Technical Note

Venture Capital at a Crossroads

By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo

Venture capital is a cyclical, ever-changing industry, as seen in recent years. The late 2010s and early 2020s witnessed record amounts of capital flowing into the sector, high valuations, and new types of investors entering the market. Innovations in the seed stage,... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital

10 May 2017
Research & Ideas

Amazon Web Services Changed the Way VCs Fund Startups

More entrepreneurs are receiving initial funding from VCs thanks to technologies such as the cloud. Source: PeopleImages As cloud technologies allow startups to build companies faster and cheaper than ever before, View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Banking; Financial Services; Information Technology

17 Aug 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Venture Capital Data: Opportunities and Challenges

Keywords: by Steven N. Kaplan and Josh Lerner; Financial Services; Banking

March 2015
Case

BOLT: Seed Venture Capital Firm

By: William A. Sahlman and Robert F. White

BOLT is a different kind of seed venture capital firm built to serve the needs of early-stage startups at the intersection of hardware and software.

In the past decade, the cost of entrepreneurial experimentation has dropped dramatically, particularly in web... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Finance; Accelerator; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Venture Capital; Applications and Software; Information Infrastructure; Strategy

2020
Working Paper

Venture Capitalists and COVID-19

By: Paul A. Gompers, Will Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan and Ilya A. Strebulaev

We survey over 1,000 institutional and corporate venture capitalists (VCs) at more than 900 different firms to learn how their decisions and investments have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We compare their survey answers to those provided by a large sample of... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Health Pandemics; Investment; Decision Making; Surveys