Publications

February 2025
Case

Hyperscaling Dreams: Ualá’s Path from Startup to Fintech Champion

By: Juan Alcacer and Manuel Franck

Ualá, founded by Pierpaolo Barbieri in 2017, is a fast-growing fintech company on a mission to revolutionize financial services in Latin America. Starting with a 14-person team and a prepaid card linked to a digital app, Ualá rapidly expanded into a comprehensive... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Leadership; Venture Capital; Talent and Talent Management; Strategy; Credit; Banking Industry; Argentina; Mexico; Colombia; Latin America

July 1990 (Revised October 1992)
Case

Consolidated Equipment Co.

By: Samuel L. Hayes III

A mature company seeks to rejuvenate itself with internal R&D and external acquisitions. It has developed a DCK model for analyzing the value of a proposed acquisition. A rewritten version of an earlier case by J.K. Butters. View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Valuation; Business Growth and Maturation; Research and Development; Acquisition; Capital Budgeting

October 2020 (Revised February 2023)
Teaching Note

MobSquad

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury

Keywords: Business Ventures; Business Startups; Labor; Human Capital; Human Resources; Crisis Management; Employment Industry; Canada; United States

Forthcoming
Article

Beefing IT Up for Your Investor? Engagement with Open Source Communities, Innovation, and Startup Funding: Evidence from GitHub

By: Annamaria Conti, Christian Peukert and Maria P. Roche

We study the engagement of nascent firms with open source communities and its implications for innovation and attracting funding. To do so, we link data on 160,065 U.S. startups from Crunchbase to their activities on the open source software development platform... View Details

Keywords: Startups; Knowledge; Open Source Communities; GitHub; Machine Learning; Innovation; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Information Technology; Strategy

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

January 2017 (Revised October 2021)
Case

Delivering the Goods at Shippo

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Jeffrey F. Rayport and Olivia Hull

Laura Behrens Wu, CEO of software start-up Shippo, prepares her pitch for a Series A funding round following a successful seed round. Customer adoption of Shippo’s e-commerce dashboard application, which allows small and medium retailers to compare delivery rates... View Details

April 2009 (Revised March 2014)
Teaching Note

Evan Williams: From Blogger to Odeo (A) and (B)

By: Noam T. Wasserman

Teaching Note for [809088]. View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Strategy; Groups and Teams; Blogs; Business Startups; Financing and Loans; Governing and Advisory Boards; Projects; Entrepreneurship

11 Sep 2000
Research & Ideas

Riding the Internet Fast Track

such as Amazon.com, drugstore.com, E*Trade, and Priceline.com, firms that unflinchingly invest millions of dollars in advertising and promotion each year to rapidly build traffic and revenues. The high-octane fuel that these super trains require is provided by booming... View Details

Keywords: by Peter Jacobs

October 2017 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Snap Inc. Goes Public (A)

By: Lynn Sharp Paine and Will Hurwitz

Snap Inc.’s chairman must decide how to address investor concerns about the company’s unprecedented plans to issue only non-voting shares in its upcoming IPO. The case is set in early 2017 following the public availability of Snap’s IPO filing with the U.S. Securities... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Capital Structure; Corporate Accountability; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Going Public; Business and Shareholder Relations; Leadership; Management; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Venture Capital; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States; California

23 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

One More Way the Startup World Hampers Women Entrepreneurs

percent to Y Combinator’s Hacker News. And of course, they dominate the conference rooms of venture capitalists and tech companies that are making decisions on investing in new products. “When you are trying to grow a startup, the people... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

October 2018
Case

Zenefits Board of Directors (A)

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

In early 2018, the time seemed right for Zenefits investor and director Lars Dalgaard to reflect on whether Zenefits had the right board of directors to shepherd the company through its next stages of growth. For the company whose name combined the words “benefits,”... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Business Model; Corporate Accountability; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Leadership; Risk Management; Venture Capital; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; Information Technology Industry; United States; California

July 2008
Teaching Note

Yale University Investments Office: August 2006 (TN)

By: Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon

Teaching Note for [807073]. View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Strategy; Cost vs Benefits; Resource Allocation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Venture Capital; Assets; Leveraged Buyouts

February 2010 (Revised January 2014)
Case

CommonAngels (A)

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Kaitlyn Simpson

Describes the motivations behind the founding of CommonAngels—a group of successful business owners who provide capital, connections, and expertise to entrepreneurs who are building new ventures. In 2005, the group is considering increasing its investment focus to... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Financing and Loans; Investment; Motivation and Incentives; Social and Collaborative Networks; Financial Services Industry

07 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

Obama’s Clean Power Plan: Can Nuclear Power Beat the Global Threat of Coal?

nuclear power from a venture capital standpoint. "There's presently a billion private dollars invested in nuclear energy in North America today," he says, adding a minute later that "nuclear is ripe for... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Energy; Utilities

February 2008 (Revised February 2009)
Case

The International Finance Corporation's Grassroots Business Initiative

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Katharine Lee

Grassroots Business Initiative was set up to financially assist small enterprises engaged in creating social value. Three years later, Harold Rosen, its creator, wished to explore an alternative funding model to provide it with scale and sustainability. View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Microfinance; Investment Funds; Social Enterprise

Find at Harvard

December 2018 (Revised June 2021)
Supplement

Bulb 2017: Launch

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

On August 21, 2015, Amit Gudka and Hayden Wood, co-founders of Bulb Ltd. (Bulb) launched a new business to supply energy to the United Kingdom’s 27 million residential homes with a promise of 100% renewable electricity at affordable prices. By the end of March 2017,... View Details

January 2014 (Revised December 2024)
Case

MuMaté: Funding Growth

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Joseph Fuller, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Alex Godden and Andrew Sandoe

Keywords: Startup; Business Startups; Financing and Loans; Venture Capital; Consumer Products Industry; United States

September 2018 (Revised June 2019)
Case

THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS: Selecting Impact Funds

By: Vikram Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Nathaniel Schwalb

After much internal debate, THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS of Denmark have decided to allocate a small percentage of their investment portfolio to impact investments. Cambridge Associates, one of the leading investment advisory firms in the world, has been engaged to assist... View Details

Keywords: Impact Investing; Mission-Related Investing; Foundations; Investment; Venture Capital; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Investment Funds; Decision Making; Consulting Industry; Financial Services Industry; Denmark; Europe

January 2000 (Revised May 2007)
Case

Dressen

By: Thomas R. Piper and Jeremy Cott

Divisional management must decide whether to support a leveraged buyout by a private equity group and, if so, what percent of ownership should go to the various partners involved. The appropriateness of the financing structure and the value of the equity depend on the... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Capital Structure; Valuation; Ownership Stake; Forecasting and Prediction