Publications

SSRN

Read Now

Article

Avoiding Overhead Aversion in Charity

By: Uri Gneezy, Elizabeth A. Keenan and Ayelet Gneezy

Donors tend to avoid charities that dedicate a high percentage of expenses to administrative and fundraising costs, limiting the ability of nonprofits to be effective. We propose a solution to this problem: Use donations from major philanthropists to cover overhead... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

Find at Harvard

2017
Article

New Venture Milestones and the First Female Board Member

By: Alicia DeSantola, Lakshmi Ramarajan and Julie Battilana

We explore the antecedents of the addition of the first woman to the boards of directors of entrepreneurial ventures. Building on research on resource dependency, we propose that new ventures are most likely to add the first woman to their boards at three developmental... View Details

Keywords: Boards Of Directors; Governing and Advisory Boards; Entrepreneurship; Gender; Diversity; Technology Industry; United States

Find at Harvard

September 2019 (Revised June 2021)
Case

Blenheim Chalcot

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In April 2019, Manoj Badale and Charles Mindenhall, co-founders of Blenheim Chalcot, were contemplating how they might go about developing their portfolio. Since founding the company as an internet consultancy called netdecisions in 1998, Badale and Mindenhall had... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; United Kingdom; United States; India

October 2019 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Souqalmal: The Choice Is Yours (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Alpana Thapar

This case describes how Ambareen Musa, Founder and CEO of Souqalmal, a Dubai-based online comparison aggregator of banking and insurance products launched her business in 2011 and rapidly grew it over next couple of years. However, by 2017, the Mauritian entrepreneur... View Details

Keywords: Unit Economics; Finance; Accounting; Competitive Strategy; Financial Statements; Insurance Industry; Middle East

January 2018 (Revised January 2019)
Case

ZappRx

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Olivia Hull

In October 2015, ZappRx founder Zoe Barry is deciding between two business models for her health technology start-up. Her product, a software application that aims to expedite the prescription fulfillment process for patients with rare diseases, has attracted interest... View Details

Keywords: Speciality Drugs; Hub Services; Pivot; Speciality Prescriptions; Health Care and Treatment; Customization and Personalization; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Decision Choices and Conditions; Pharmaceutical Industry; Massachusetts

March 2013 (Revised July 2014)
Supplement

Bay Partners (B)

By: Josh Lerner and Lauren Barley

In December 2012, Salil Deshpande has rejoined Bay Partners (Bay), which had been restructured following the 2010 departures of three of its general partners. Life was good for Deshpande: his firm had distributed roughly $1 billion to its limited partners (LPs) over... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Investment Funds; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry

November 2012 (Revised December 2017)
Case

TerraPower

By: William A. Sahlman, Ramana Nanda, Joseph B. Lassiter III and James McQuade

John Gilleland, CEO of TerraPower, returned to his office after a lengthy meeting with potential investors. It was October 2012, and TerraPower was in the process of raising a $200M Series C round to finance the ongoing development of its next-generation nuclear... View Details

Keywords: Nuclear Power; Entrepreneurial Finance; Financing and Loans; Venture Capital; Energy Industry; United States; China; India

30 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 30

the collective interest levels of the angels can lead to a discrete change in the probability of funding for otherwise comparable ventures. We first show that angel funding is positively correlated with higher survival, additional View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2023
Case

Enstitute

By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Kumba Sennaar and Sarah Mehta

Shaila Ittycheria (MBA ’10) founded the nonprofit organization Enstitute, in 2012 in New York City. Determined to challenge the status quo within higher education, Shaila and her cofounder sought to expand opportunities for talented young people by placing them in... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Operations; Business Startups; Business Growth and Maturation; Education Industry; Employment Industry; United States

November 2024 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Moonfare and the Democratization of Private Equity

By: Victoria Ivashina and Srimayi Mylavarapu

Founded in 2016, Moonfare headquartered in Europe, was a pioneer in the “democratization” of private equity investments. Historically, private equity was accessible only to institutional investors like pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, and large family... View Details

19 Dec 2023
Research & Ideas

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

educational institutions and nonprofits, based on our research parameters. Many of the largest grants went to the foundations or fundraising arms of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-serving... View Details

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

January 2023
Article

The Dark Side of Machiavellian Rhetoric: Signaling in Reward-Based Crowdfunding Performance

By: Goran Calic, Rene Arseneault and Maryam Ghasemaghaei

In this study, we explore the impact of Machiavellian rhetoric on fundraising within the increasingly important context of online crowdfunding. The “all-or-nothing” funding model used by the world’s largest crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter, may be an attractive... View Details

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Communication Strategy; Entrepreneurial Finance; Behavior

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

June 2008 (Revised July 2008)
Case

The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis

By: Robert Steven Kaplan, Christopher Marquis and Brent Kazan

Marc Buoniconti is the co-founder of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, a nonprofit medical research organization. The project was founded in 1985 by Marc and his father Nick, a former Hall of Fame football player, when Marc suffered a spinal cord injury. In 2007,... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Health Testing and Trials; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Research and Development; Nonprofit Organizations; Health Industry; Miami

September 2024
Case

Eat App: Building and Monetizing an End-to-End Dining Experience Solution

By: Elie Ofek and Ahmed Dahawy

Founded in 2015 in Bahrain, Eat App was an up-and-coming player in the global restaurant management software business. In early 2024, having shifted to a product-led growth strategy, the company’s co-founders faced a host of decisions that could greatly impact their... View Details

Keywords: Price; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Marketing; Negotiation Deal; Internet and the Web; Value Creation; Profit; Revenue; Applications and Software; Product; Food and Beverage Industry; Technology Industry; Bahrain; United Arab Emirates; Abu Dhabi; Dubai

May 2022
Case

Deborah Quazzo at GSV Ventures

By: William A. Sahlman, Michael D. Smith and Nicole Tempest Keller

As COVID-19 swept across the globe in 2020, the education sector faced unprecedented disruption. Schools and colleges worldwide shut down, forcing over a billion students and teachers to move to online learning. Investor interest in the EdTech space exploded as... View Details

Keywords: Edtech; Technology; Online Learning; COVID-19 Pandemic; Education; Information Technology; Venture Capital; Change Management; Strategy; Education Industry; Financial Services Industry; Chicago; California

2022
Working Paper

Small Campaign Donors

By: Laurent Bouton, Julia Cagé, Edgard Dewitte and Vincent Pons

In this paper, we study the characteristics and behavior of small donors, and compare them to those of large donors. We first build a novel dataset including all the 340 million individual contributions reported to the U.S. Federal Election Commission between 2005 and... View Details

Keywords: Campaign Finance; Campaign Contributions; Small Donations; ActBlue; WinRed; TV Advertising; Political Elections; Finance; Demographics; Advertising; Analysis; Analytics and Data Science