Publications

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22 Feb 2022
Cold Call Podcast

How to Scale a Startup Marketplace for Used Furniture

Keywords: Re: Ayelet Israeli; Consumer Products

27 Jul 2020
Working Paper Summaries

The Evolution of CEO Compensation in Venture Capital-Backed Startups

Keywords: by Michael Ewens, Ramana Nanda, and Christopher Stanton

August 2019 (Revised October 2019)
Teaching Note

BulkWhiz: Negotiating as a Startup Founder in the UAE

By: Katherine B. Coffman and Christine Exley

Teaching Note for HBS No. 919-004. View Details

Research Summary

The Servicification of the U.S. Economy: The Role of Startups versus Incumbent Firms

By: Karen Mills

Over the last few decades, the U.S. economy has exhibited a significant shift from manufacturing towards services. This transition has been particularly prominent in an important subcategory of services industries that drives innovation and employs many high-wage... 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 post-startup job. Failed View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

August 2019 (Revised March 2023)
Case

Rand Fishkin at Moz (A)

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

In 2016, senior management at Moz, a venture capital–backed startup providing software tools for digital marketing professionals, must decide how to address a looming cash flow crisis precipitated by failed efforts to broaden its product line. Seattle-based Moz had... View Details

Keywords: Startups; Scaling; Entrepreneurship; Failure; Business Startups; Diversification; Growth Management; Technology Industry

July 2023 (Revised October 2024)
Case

Revenue Recognition at Stride Funding: Making Sense of Revenues for a Fintech Startup

By: Paul M. Healy and Jung Koo Kang

The case explores the challenges of revenue recognition and financial reporting for Stride Funding (Stride), a fintech startup that has disrupted the student loan market. Stride leveraged proprietary machine learning and financial models to underwrite alternative... View Details

Keywords: Revenue Recognition; Financial Reporting; Entrepreneurial Finance; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Governance Compliance; Accrual Accounting; Financial Services Industry; United States

October 2018
Case

BreezoMeter: Making Air Pollution Data Actionable

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Allison M. Ciechanover and Margot Eiran

The case focuses on an Israeli startup that provides actionable air pollution data and forecasts. The company has over 50 enterprise customers and its tool reached a million people daily in 67 countries. The co-founders wrestle with which markets and customers to focus... View Details

Keywords: Startups; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Pollutants; Analytics and Data Science; Sales; Marketing; Decision Choices and Conditions; Technology Industry; Israel; United States

03 May 2024
Research & Ideas

How Much Does Proximity Influence Startup Innovation? 20 Meters' Worth to Be Exact

A new study of startups sharing a coworking space offers a new wrinkle in the debate over work-from-anywhere: Proximity matters, especially close proximity, to spread knowledge between disparate enterprises. “The more different the View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

28 Apr 2023
Cold Call Podcast

Sweden’s Northvolt Electric Battery Maker: A Startup with a Mission

Keywords: Re: George Serafeim; Battery; Auto; Electronics; Energy

June 2015 (Revised February 2016)
Case

Team Rubicon: Bridging the Gap from Startup to National Organization

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Dan Nidess

Team Rubicon, a military veteran volunteer disaster relief organization, has experienced significant success in attracting attention and support in its first four years of operation. The challenges of managing the volunteer base, the cost of responding to disasters,... View Details

Keywords: Growth Strategy And Execution; Disaster Relief; NGO; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Non-Governmental Organizations

18 Jan 2021
Book

How Thinking Like a Startup Helps Governments Solve More Problems

startup in govtech or a public sector group at a large company working on public sector cloud solutions, for example. Another reason is that people not in government, such as private business leaders or philanthropic leaders, may say,... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

August 2024
Module Note

EoTV: Module 5 - Cultural Factors and the Startup Ecosystem

By: Paul Gompers

Article

How a Fast-Growing Startup Built Its Sales Team for Long-Term Success

By: Frank V. Cespedes and David Mattson

It’s common for leaders of sales teams to focus almost exclusively on short-term tactics and current operations while failing to think and act in a way that supports the longer-term needs of their businesses—and it’s hard to fault them. The biggest problem with a... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Salesforce Management; Management Practices and Processes

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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

15 Dec 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Biased Sampling of Early Users and the Direction of Startup Innovation

Keywords: by Ruiqing Cao, Rembrand Koning, and Ramana Nanda

20 Oct 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Flight to Safety: How Economic Downturns Affect Talent Flows to Startups

Keywords: by Shai Benjamin Bernstein, Richard Townsend, and Ting Xu

2024
Working Paper

Contributing to Growth? The Role of Open Source Software for Global Startups

By: Nataliya Langburd Wright, Frank Nagle and Shane Greenstein

How does participating in open source software (OSS) communities spur entrepreneurial growth? To address this question, we analyze novel data matching accounts from GitHub—the largest OSS hosting platform—to the universe of global software venture-backed firms... View Details

Keywords: Applications and Software; Open Source Distribution; Entrepreneurship; Business Growth and Maturation; Human Capital; Valuation; Corporate Strategy