Publications

January 2009 (Revised December 2009)
Case

Playing With Fire at Sittercity (A)

By: Noam T. Wasserman and Rachel Gordon

To help her finance her aggressive expansion plans, Genevieve Thiers plans to raise venture capital for the first time. She has spent the last six long years building Sittercity into the nation's leading babysitting web service, larger than all of its competitors... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Family and Family Relationships; Expansion; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Agreements and Arrangements

October 2018
Case

Accomplice: Scaling Early Stage Finance

By: Ramana Nanda, Raffaella Sadun and Olivia Hull

Accomplice, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Boston, is raising its second fund in November 2017. Since 2009, the firm has followed a seed-led investment model, investing in tech companies at the earliest stages, often when products and business models are... View Details

Keywords: Early Stage Finance; Seed Finance; Scouts; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Private Equity; Investment Portfolio; Organizational Structure; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Partners and Partnerships; Networks; Adaptation; Corporate Strategy; Technology; Financial Services Industry; Massachusetts; Boston; Cambridge; United States

March 2018 (Revised December 2019)
Case

Edward Lewis: Essence Magazine

By: Steven Rogers and Jacqueline Adams

Essence, the first magazine aimed at African-American women, was created by four, young, Black entrepreneurs in the aftermath of massive racial and political upheaval in the United States in 1968. The venture was a financial, branding and cultural success. By 2005, the... View Details

Brian Trelstad is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School in the General Management Unit and the Faculty Chair of the Advanced Leadership Initiative. He teaches elective courses on Social Entrepreneurship and Systems... View Details

Keywords: venture capital industry; venture capital industry; venture capital industry; venture capital industry; venture capital industry; venture capital industry

August 2023
Case

Floward

By: Krishna Palepu and Namrata Arora

In 2022, Abdulaziz B. Al Loughani, CEO and co-founder of Floward, an online flower and gifting company established in Kuwait in 2017, contemplated the firm's growth trajectory. Floward, an e-commerce enterprise that offered fresh-cut flowers sourced directly from... View Details

Keywords: Initial Public Offering; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Information Technology Industry; Middle East; North Africa; Saudi Arabia; Kuwait; United Arab Emirates; Jordan

May 2012
Case

Start-Up Chile: April 2012

By: Lynda M. Applegate, William R. Kerr, Josh Lerner, Dina D. Pomeranz, Gustavo A. Herrero and Cintra Scott

Start-Up Chile is a unique program to encourage entrepreneurs to bring their new ventures to Chile. Policymakers must evaluate its effectiveness in achieving economic and social goals. View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Policy; Chile

October 2013 (Revised January 2017)
Case

Walmart around the World

By: Juan Alcácer, Abhishek Agrawal and Harshit Vaish

After reaching the limits of its successful expansion in the United States in the early 1990s, Walmart sought growth opportunities in markets abroad. This case describes Walmart's attempts to replicate its successful U.S. business model in Mexico, Canada, Brazil,... View Details

Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Success; Globalized Markets and Industries; Expansion; Market Entry and Exit; Failure; Retail Industry; Germany; China; Argentina; South Korea; Canada; Japan; Brazil; Africa; United Kingdom; United States; Mexico

21 Nov 2006
First Look

First Look: November 21, 2006

constrained domestically and those that are more technology intensive, exhibit a higher sensitivity of affiliate cash holdings to repatriation tax burdens. Download working paper: http://www.people.hbs.edu/ffoley/Cash.pdf Skill vs. Luck in Entrepreneurship and View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2007
Case

Buddy March

Entrepreneurial general manager (GM) ignores specific directives from his boss (GVP) to discontinue a new venture that the GM is championing. View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Rank and Position; Management Teams

Find at Harvard

3 PM – 4 PM EST, 11 Dec 2017
Webinars: Trending@HBS

Entrepreneurship: Failing Well

Most ventures fail. Most lives are built on journeys that did not get to their desired destination. How can we think about failure as a necessary part of growth and learn to fail well? View Details

July 2001 (Revised August 2004)
Case

AdNet (A)

By: Ashish Nanda

Confronted by a business proposal that is remarkably similar to a project recently financed by a sister office, venture capitalist Monique LeMieux ponders what she should do. View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Ethics; Standards; Financial Services Industry

07 Mar 2019
News

Jim Rooney, Haven, and Cord Cutting

July 2003 (Revised September 2003)
Case

Refinancing of Shanghai General Motors (B), The

By: Mihir A. Desai and Mark Veblen

This case provides the outcome to "The Refinancing of Shanghai General Motors (A)" in which the CFO of General Motors' joint venture in Shanghai, Shanghai General Motors (SGM), wants to refinance almost $900 million of project finance it raised to begin operations. The... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Multinational Firms and Management; Joint Ventures; Financing and Loans; Auto Industry; Shanghai

September 2016 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Casper Sleep Inc.: Marketing the 'One Perfect Mattress for Everyone'

By: Robert J. Dolan

“A Warby Parker of mattresses? Somebody is going to do it. Why not us?” This was the topic of a conversation begun in spring 2013 among Gabe Flateman, Philip Krim, Neil Parikh, and T. Luke Sherwin. The four met as members of a New York City venture accelerator... View Details

Keywords: Mattress; Sleep; Marketing; Business Model; Marketing Channels; Adoption; Sales; Consumer Products Industry

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

08 Sep 2021
Blog Post

Building the Bridge from Nonprofit to VC with Joshua Mbanusi (MBA 2021)

A career pivot into venture capital from a “nontraditional” HBS professional background can seem daunting, or perhaps even impossible. In truth, it is a significant challenge to secure a full-time or internship role in View Details

June 2006 (Revised September 2006)
Case

S&S Podcasts: Deciding to Launch

Describes the effort by two MBA students to find an opportunity for a new venture in the burgeoning "podcast" space. View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Product Launch

Career Coach

Imam Akinlade

Imam wants to help students think critically about their career paths and what really maters most to them, Having gained significant experience in consulting, impact investing and clean energy before HBS; and exploring several career paths while at HBS including... View Details

March 2000 (Revised April 2000)
Case

Martin Smith: May 2000

By: G. Felda Hardymon and Josh Lerner

A new associate at a venture capital firm must choose which of three potential investments to recommend to the firm's partners. Each potential investment has strengths and drawbacks. View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Investment; Valuation