Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,573)
- Faculty Publications (307)
- September 2020
- Case
The Black New Venture Competition
Black entrepreneurs encounter many unique obstacles when raising capital to start and grow a business. During their second year at Harvard Business School (HBS), MBA students Kimberly Foster and Tyler Simpson decided to do something to make a difference for... View Details
Keywords: Startup; Start-up; Startup Financing; Startups; Start-ups; African-American Protagonist; African-american Entrepreneurs; African-american Investors; African-Americans; African-American Women; Black Leadership; Black Inventors; Black Entrepreneurs; Harvard Business School; Harvard; Business And Society; Early Stage Funding; Early Stage Finance; Technology Entrepreneurship; Discrimination; Technology Ventures; Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurial Financing; Business Plan; Business Startups; Business Ventures; Financing and Loans; Business Growth and Maturation; Diversity; Gender; Race; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Small Business; Leadership; Information Technology; Competition; Technology Industry
- 2023
- Working Paper
Fencing Off Silicon Valley: Cross-Border Venture Capital and Technology Spillovers
By: Ufuk Akcigit, Sina T. Ates, Josh Lerner, Richard Townsend and Yulia Zhestkova
The treatment of foreign investors is a contentious topic in U.S. entrepreneurship policy. We
model a setting where foreign corporate investments in Silicon Valley may allow U.S. entrepreneurs
to pursue technologies that they could not otherwise, but may also lead to... View Details
- September 2020
- Teaching Plan
Harlem Capital: Changing the Face of Entrepreneurship
By: George Serafeim
Jarrid Tingle and Henri Pierre-Jacques had spent the summer between their first and second years of their MBA program fund raising for their start-up venture capital (VC) firm, Harlem Capital Partners. Harlem Capital was founded upon the principle that addressing the... View Details
Keywords: Venture Capital Firm Compensation; Entrepreneurial Finance; Entrepreneurial Financing; Black Entrepreneurs; Black Leadership; Black Inventors; Inclusion; Minority-owned Businesses; Race And Ethnicity; Race Characteristics; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Diversity; Race; Gender; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Financial Services Industry; United States
- September 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
d.light
By: Michael Chu, Krishna G. Palepu and Dilyana Karadzhova Botha
Kenyan off-grid-solar pioneer d.light can power entire homes in rural Africa but must now decide how to fund the growth of its asset-heavy business model. Ned Tozun and Sam Goldman founded d.light in 2006 to transform lives through solar solutions enabling access to... View Details
- August 2020 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
PayPal: The Next Chapter
By: Michael Porter, Mark Kramer and Annelena Lobb
Can a social purpose and stakeholder capitalism confer a powerful competitive advantage in the age of COVID-19? For PayPal, the answer is yes. After spinning off from eBay in a 2015 IPO, the company declared its purpose as "democratizing financial services" by ensuring... View Details
- July 2020
- Supplement
Instabeat—Crossing the Finish Line
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Nicole Tempest Keller and Alpana Thapar
Lebanese entrepreneur Hind Hobeika was just 21 years old when she launched her startup, Instabeat, which had developed the first real-time bio-feedback device for swimmers to monitor and improve their performance. It had been an extremely testing 10-year journey to... View Details
- July 2020
- Case
Amanda and Kristen: Mented Cosmetics
By: Steven Rogers, Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Alterrell Mills
The co-founders (Black HBS alumnae) of an e-commerce beauty startup explore the unmet needs within the beauty industry. This case study examines the entrepreneurial opportunities that come from identifying an underserved market, specifically within the Black community... View Details
Keywords: Brands and Branding; Competition; Customers; Disruption; Disruptive Innovation; Distribution Channels; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Macroeconomics; Marketing; Marketing Channels; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Product Design; Product Development; Product Positioning; Sales; Social Issues; Social Marketing; Business Startups; Strategic Planning; Strategy; Supply Chain Management; Venture Capital; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Advertising Industry; Public Relations Industry; Chemical Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Retail Industry; North and Central America; United States; New York (city, NY); New York (state, US)
- July 2020
- Article
The Persistent Effect of Initial Success: Evidence from Venture Capital
By: Ramana Nanda, Sampsa Samila and Olav Sorenson
We use investment-level data to study performance persistence in venture capital (VC). Consistent with prior studies, we find that each additional IPO among a VC firm's first ten investments predicts as much as an 8% higher IPO rate on its subsequent investments,... View Details
Keywords: Performance; Monitoring; Selection; Status; Venture Capital; Performance Consistency; Investment
- May 2020 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Amy Klopfenstein and Amram Migdal
In November 2019, Sandra Richter, co-founder and CEO of Soofa, a network of advertising-supported digital bulletin boards, must decide between two different fundraising and expansion plans for her company. One plan entails raising $15 million in a Series A round and... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Model; Business Plan; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Decisions; Ethics; Geography; Geopolitical Units; Finance; Investment; Markets; Market Entry and Exit; Demand and Consumers; Network Effects; Media; Society; Urban Development; Sustainable Cities; Information Technology; Information Infrastructure; Digital Platforms; Strategy; Business Strategy; Expansion; Relationships; Partners and Partnerships; Capital; Venture Capital; Advertising Industry; Technology Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; North and Central America; United States; Massachusetts; Cambridge
- 2020
- Working Paper
Anchors Aweigh: Analysis of Anchor Limited Partner Investors in Impact Investment Funds
By: Shawn A. Cole, T. Robert Zochowski, Fanele Mashwama and Heather McPherson
This note describes results from a survey of “anchor investors” in impact funds. Anchor investors
are described as “generally the first investor to make a substantial capital commitment to a fund,”
(according to the Global Impact Investing Network, “GIIN”) and their... View Details
- May 2020
- Article
The Creation and Evolution of Entrepreneurial Public Markets
By: Shai Bernstein, Abhishek Dev and Josh Lerner
This paper explores the creation and evolution of new stock exchanges around the world geared towards entrepreneurial companies, known as second-tier exchanges. Using hand-collected novel data, we document the proliferation of these new stock exchanges that were... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Elusive Safety: The New Geography of Capital Flows and Risk
By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Ruth Judson and Tim Schmidt-Eisenlohr
A confidential dataset with industry-level disaggregation of U.S. cross-border claims and liabilities, shows U.S. securities to be increasingly intermediated by tax-haven-financial-centers (THFC) and less regulated funds. These securities are risky, in... View Details
- April 2020 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
WeWork—November 2018
By: Paul A. Gompers, Patrick Sweeney and Alex Gachanja
In May 2017, SoftBank announced the official launch of the Vision Fund — which promptly became the largest technology-focused investment fund in the world, with nearly $100 billion in capital under its management. Reports from a few months prior hinted that SoftBank... View Details
- March 2020 (Revised June 2022)
- Case
GreenLight Fund
By: Brian Trelstad, Julia Kelley and Mel Martin
As Tara Noland, the Executive Director (ED) of GreenLight Cincinnati, reflected on her first few years on the job. Noland had delivered on what she had been hired to do in the city: work with leading philanthropists and nonprofit executives to use data and evidence to... View Details
- February 2020 (Revised March 2020)
- Case
Prime Coalition: Catalytic Capital for Climate Innovation
By: Ramana Nanda, Benjamin N. Roth and Olivia Hull
With long development timelines and high risk, new energy technologies were often left to languish in the “valley of death,” unable to raise enough funds to bring a product to market. In 2014, Sarah Kearney founded the nonprofit Prime Coalition to solve this problem.... View Details
Keywords: Energy Conservation; Renewable Energy; Social Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Investment; Innovation and Invention; Technological Innovation; Mission and Purpose; Science-Based Business; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Enterprise; Energy Industry; Technology Industry; Green Technology Industry; United States
- January 2020
- Teaching Note
PROOF: Pro Rata Opportunity Fund
By: Josh Lerner, Shai Bernstein and Terrence Shu
This is a teaching note meant to accompany "PROOF: Pro Rata Opportunity Fund," HBS Case No. 820-030. View Details
- December 2019 (Revised June 2024)
- Case
The Dutch East India Company in 1612 (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci
The Dutch East India Company’s board of directors must decide what to do about an impending legal requirement to liquidate the company’s assets and return to shareholders their capital and any profits earned during a ten-year lock-up period. The charter granted to the... View Details
- November 2019
- Case
Floating the Exchange Rate: In Pursuit of the Chinese Dream
By: Laura Alfaro and Sarah Jeong
In the decades following 2005, China faced significant financial challenges. Inflation spiraled upwards and China’s economy stagnated in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. The country’s leaders took an interventionist approach to weather the storm, controlling... View Details
- October 2019
- Case
Harlem Capital: Changing the Face of Entrepreneurship (A)
By: George Serafeim and David Freiberg
Jarrid Tingle and Henri Pierre-Jacques had spent the summer between their first and second years of their Harvard Business School MBA program fund raising for their start-up venture capital (VC) firm, Harlem Capital Partners. Harlem Capital was founded upon the... View Details
Keywords: Impact Investing; Gender Bias; Gender Inequality; Minority Representation; Entrepreneurial Finance; Investment Management; Investing; Inequality; Race And Ethnicity; Black Entrepreneurs; Black Inventors; Black Leadership; Venture Investing; Fund Raising; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Diversity; Gender; Race; Equality and Inequality; Equity; Mission and Purpose; Investment Funds; Financial Services Industry; United States
- 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