Publications

30 Apr 2019
News

Founder of Hinge Has Some Thoughts on Your Dating Profile

Photo courtesy of Justin McLeod, via Instagram Photo courtesy of Justin McLeod, via Instagram Justin McLeod (MBA 2011), the self-proclaimed romantic and founder of Hinge, the fast-growing dating app, thinks you can learn from his story.... View Details

Keywords: News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information

January 2016 (Revised July 2017)
Case

HourlyNerd

By: Jill Avery and Joseph Fuller

HourlyNerd, a two-sided marketplace platform for matching freelance consultants with small companies looking for help, struggles to define a growth plan for the future. The company, started as a class project in HBS' FIELD 3 course, is assessing three growth paths:... View Details

Keywords: Startup; Lean Startup; Two Sided Markets; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Consulting Industry; United States

07 Jul 2022
HBS Case

How a Multimillion-Dollar Ice Cream Startup Melted Down (and Bounced Back)

finding the right match with people who could run those more distant stores and train people,” says Hyde. Despite these issues, Ample Hills expanded from the East Coast to the West, opening a store in the trendy Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. The location... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

25 Apr 2023
News

Class of 2022 Startups Sweep Alumni New Venture Competition

and Sylvan Guo, for Hue, an e-commerce technology platform that helps brands and retailers to showcase short-form, customer-generated video reviews on their websites. The virtual audience then awarded the Crowd Favorite prize of $5,000 to Tilden, a nonalcoholic... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

23 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

One More Way the Startup World Hampers Women Entrepreneurs

found growth and venture funding for female-focused startups were just as strong as their male-centered competition. Koning surmises that on those days, founders received positive feedback that not only... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

20 Jul 2017
News

Life Lab Nurtures Early Stage Startup Day Zero Diagnostics

Melis Anahtar in the Life Lab If you’ve ever been hospitalized with an infection and had to wait days for test results and a treatment plan, you understand the problems that Day Zero Diagnostics (DZD) is addressing. The company is one of the 14 inaugural View Details

Keywords: Scientific Research and Development Services

February 2024
Supplement

Ada: On Fundraising and Cofounding

By: Reza Satchu and Patrick Sanguineti

Mike Murchison, cofounder and CEO of Ada, shares his fundraising philosophy and reflects on what he believes underpins a successful cofounder relationship. View Details

Keywords: Founder; Entrepreneur; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Partners and Partnerships; Entrepreneurial Finance

28 Sep 2023
News

What Ray Dalio Can Teach Us About Global Venture and Startups

Ray Dalio (photo via Bridgewater Associates) and Alex Lazarow (photo by Lindsay Upson) In a recent conversation with Bridgewater Associates Founder Ray Dalio (MBA 1973), Alex Lazarow (MBA 2010) gleaned three insights (and one bonus) from... View Details

February 2024
Supplement

Ada: General Updates

By: Reza Satchu and Patrick Sanguineti

Mike Murchison, cofounder and CEO of Ada, updates the audience on which investor he chose as well as how Ada has grown since its Series B. View Details

Keywords: Founder; Entrepreneur; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Growth and Development

18 Nov 2020
Video

Taking it to the Street: Health Care Startups Bet on Success Despite COVID-19

08 May 2025
Blog Post

Startup Roots and Engineering Ambitions: Lizzie Matusov (MS/MBA 2022)

MS/MBA Engineering Program empowered you as a woman in the startup space? Women account for just 13% of startup founders, and technical women founders are less than a fifth of... View Details

03 Oct 2022
Research & Ideas

Why a Failed Startup Might Be Good for Your Career After All

Glass profile database, which collects work history and education data from various public and private sources. Combined with Dow Jones VentureSource data, the list was winnowed to 14,000 founders of VC-backed companies who listed a... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

December 2014 (Revised May 2015)
Case

Growth Hacking at Bazaart (A)

By: Jeffrey Bussgang and Matthew G. Preble

The four founding members of Bazaart—a young Israeli company whose sole product was its eponymous mobile application (app) which allowed users to create collages from photographs and other images—face an important strategic decision in June 2014. Since its founding... View Details

Keywords: Growth Hacking; Customer Acquisition; Startup Marketing; Startup; Startup Nation; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Customers; Marketing; Social Marketing; Fashion Industry; Technology Industry; Israel

15 Nov 2017
Research & Ideas

How Does a Social Startup Decide to Commercialize? It May Depend on the Founder's Gender

organizations: Businesses focus on commerce, while charities engage in activities that support social welfare. Increasingly, however, founders of social ventures interested in improving society are pursuing hybrid business models, which... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

22 Jul 2021
News

Mentoring Fashion Startups in Singapore; Rising Star Accolades for Mid-Career Women

Clubs News Clubs News Singapore War Room Sessions Link Startups with HBS Alumni Mentors The HBS Club of Singapore (HBSCS), in collaboration with the Textile and Fashion Federation (TaFF) and its signature The Bridge Fashion Incubator... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

September 2019 (Revised December 2019)
Supplement

Anthony Soohoo: Retrospection on Dot & Bo

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Allison M. Ciechanover and George Gonzalez

The case describes the final year of the once-promising furniture e-tailer, Dot & Bo, that included a challenging fundraising market, troubles with logistics and operations, and a team tragedy. The founder looks back at the experience and shares his learnings about... View Details

Keywords: Startups; Furnishing; Leadership; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Internet and the Web; Failure; Learning; E-commerce; United States

April 2017
Case

Luminopia: Improving Treatment for Visual Disorders

By: Doug J. Chung and Sarah Mehta

Luminopia—a start-up founded in January 2016 by three Harvard College freshmen—uses virtual reality technology to treat amblyopia (more commonly called “lazy eye”), the single biggest cause of visual disorders among children. By February 2017, the three founders had... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Virtual Reality; Startup; Marketing; Marketing Channels; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Business Startups; Price; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Cambridge; Massachusetts; United States

2025
Working Paper

Bringing Science to Market: Knowledge Foundations, Inventor-Founders, and Performance

By: Justine Boudou and Maria Roche

In this paper, we examine how a startup’s knowledge foundations—embedded in its core technology—influence its performance in the exit market. Using a dataset of 1,006 biomedicine startups founded between 2005 and 2015, we focus on two key factors: (1) the degree of... View Details

Keywords: Firm Performance; Knowledge Foundations; Exits; Academic Startups; Inventor-founder; Specialized Scientific Knowledge; Competitive Advantage; Value Creation; Research; Information Publishing; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship

Read Now

September 2019
Exercise

Difficult Conversations (B)

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai

The exercises can be used as a follow-up to the Yesware (A) case (#816-039), or in conjunction with any case that involves replacing a founding team member (and/or providing feedback to a top executive). This is a role-playing exercise, and has been carried out in the... View Details

Keywords: Firing; Feedback; Founders; Culture; Values; Neuroscience; Business Startups; Organizational Culture; Resignation and Termination; Communication; Emotions; Trust; Human Resources; Entrepreneurship