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November–December 2024
Article

Scaling Up Transformational Innovations

By: Peter Koen, Ananya Sheth, Mike DiPaola and Linda A. Hill

For large companies operating in mature sectors—such as Procter & Gamble in consumer goods, Apple in consumer electronics, and Adobe in cloud software—driving growth is a perennial challenge. Growth through acquisition is always an option, but companies often quickly... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

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May 2024
Background Note

Net Revenue Retention: Unpacking the Dynamics of Customer Monetization

By: Elie Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller

Firms and investors alike are beginning to recognize the importance of tracking how revenues from existing customers are evolving over time and to appreciate the value in understanding what might explain changes in these revenues. Consequently, in addition to looking... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Revenue; Measurement and Metrics; Customer Value and Value Chain

May 2024
Supplement

gWorks (A)

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

In January of 2019, Joe Heieck, CEO of gWorks, was deciding whether to proceed with his acquisition of Data Tech, that was a business roughly the same size as gWorks. gWorks, which provided geospatial software to small city and rural county governments, was acquired by... View Details

May 2024
Supplement

gWorks (B)

By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

In January of 2019, Joe Heieck, CEO of gWorks, was deciding whether to proceed with his acquisition of Data Tech, that was a business roughly the same size as gWorks. gWorks, which provided geospatial software to small city and rural county governments, was acquired by... View Details

January 2024 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Runa

By: Paul Gompers and Carla Larangeira

In early 2022, Courtney McColgan, founder and CEO of Runa, a human resources and payroll Software-as-a-Service platform, faced an unexpected tech market downturn. Founded in 2018, Runa catered to small and medium-sized businesses in Mexico, offering an affordable and... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Volatility; Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Leadership; Management; Venture Capital; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Business Growth and Maturation; Latin America

October 2023 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Ball: EVA Driving the World's Leading Can Manufacturer (A)

By: Jonas Heese and Susan Pinckney

The case describes Ball’s multi decade history of using Economic Value Added to drive decision making and workforce compensation. In 2016, the company acquired Rexam PLC and became the world’s leading metal beverage container company. Consumer demand for varied... View Details

April 2023
Article

Inattentive Inference

By: Thomas Graeber

This paper studies how people infer a state of the world from information structures that include additional, payoff-irrelevant states. For example, learning from a customer review about a product’s quality requires accounting for the reviewer’s otherwise irrelevant... View Details

Keywords: Cognition and Thinking; Information Types; Behavior; Knowledge Acquisition

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February 22, 2023
Article

How to Seed Organic Marketing in a Video-First World

By: Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Matt Higgins

Early direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies relied on plentiful capital and low-cost digital marketing to power growth. But as this sector has matured, capital is more constrained, social media is more cluttered, and customer acquisition costs are rising. DTC companies... View Details

Keywords: Online Business; Ecommerce; E-commerce; E-Commerce Strategy; Omnichannel Retail; Omnichannel Retailing; Influencer Marketing; Consumer; Organic Growth; Video Advertising; Promotion; Celebrities; Online Advertising; Online Channel; Online Communities; Online Community; Go To Market Strategy; Platform; Media; Media Content; Digital; Digital Culture; Digital Influencers; Direct To Consumer Marketing; Direct-to-consumer; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Sales; Digital Platforms; Digital Marketing; Digital Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Internet and the Web; Advertising; Business Model; Growth Management; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Channels; Marketing Communications; Communication Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Fashion Industry; Advertising Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States; North America

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January 2023 (Revised December 2023)
Case

OhmConnect: Energizing the Future

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Jennifer Fonstad and Nicole Tempest Keller

Founded in 2013, OhmConnect was a free consumer web app that alerted customers about peak hours of electricity demand, and paid them to lower their energy use at home during these periods. The company sold the aggregated reductions generated by thousands of households... View Details

Keywords: App Development; Renewable Energy; Electricity Usage; Regulations; VC; Technology; Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC); Scalability; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business Model; Venture Capital; Energy Industry; United States; California; Texas; Europe

December 2022
Case

To Feed the Planet: Juan Luciano at ADM

By: Joshua D. Margolis, David E. Bell, Damien McLoughlin, Stacy Straaberg and James Weber

In December 2022, Juan Luciano, Chairman and CEO of agribusiness and nutrition giant ADM, considered the next phase of the historic company’s future. Beginning in 2011 when he joined as COO and moving into his tenure as CEO in 2015, Luciano led a transformation of ADM... View Details

September 2022
Background Note

On CUE: The Quest for Optimal Customer Unit Economics

By: Elie Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller

Startups are often evaluated by how well they perform on unit economics, defined as the ratio of a customer’s lifetime value (LTV) to acquisition costs (CAC). A common target for unit economics, advocated by many VCs and analysts, is 3:1 (i.e., LTV/CAC=3). While there... View Details

Keywords: Unit Economics; Business Startups; Performance Evaluation; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Relationship Management; Analysis

December 2021 (Revised May 2022)
Case

Troverie (A)

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Lindsay N. Hyde and Olivia Graham

Six months after the August 2018 launch of Troverie, a U.S.-based online retailer of luxury watches, the average cost of acquiring a customer is much higher than originally projected, and the startup is incurring a substantial loss on each sales transaction. Could... View Details

Keywords: Startup; Luxury Goods; Customer Acquisition; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Luxury; Failure; Internet and the Web; Revenue; Fashion Industry; United States

September 2021 (Revised December 2023)
Case

On the Bubble: Startup Bootstrapping

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Tom Quinn and Annelena Lobb

Bubble was a software company in the low-code/no-code market, making tools that allowed users without traditional programming backgrounds or technical skills to build software. The case covers cofounder Joshua Haas’s engineering background, as he experienced a high... View Details

September 2021 (Revised December 2021)
Case

Spire, the CubeSat Revolution, and the Government as a Space Data Customer

By: Matthew Weinzierl, Mehak Sarang and Brendan L. Rosseau

This case outlines the rise of Spire Global, a young space company using CubeSats to provide weather data and weather prediction services. In addition to tracing the evolution of a space startup from novel idea to publicly-traded company, the case also examines the... View Details

Keywords: Space; Government Contracting; Remote Sensing; Satellites; Business Startups; Public Sector; Cost vs Benefits; Competition; Weather; Forecasting and Prediction

July 2021 (Revised January 2024)
Case

Fynd

By: Ranjay Gulati, Kairavi Dey and Rachna Tahilyani

Fynd is a fast-growing venture that in 7 years since its founding has become India's largest omnichannel retail company with real-time access to over 9,000 stores' offline inventory. It started as a B2B business supporting retailers who didn’t have an online business,... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Business Model; Acquisition; Decision Making; Cost vs Benefits; Growth and Development Strategy; Web Services Industry; Technology Industry; Communications Industry; India; Mumbai

July 2021
Article

Information Transparency, Multihoming, and Platform Competition: A Natural Experiment in the Daily Deals Market

By: Hui Li and Feng Zhu

Platform competition is shaped by the likelihood of multi-homing (i.e., complementors or consumers adopt more than one platform). To take advantage of multi-homing, platform firms often attempt to motivate their rivals’ high-performing complementors to adopt their own... View Details

Keywords: Platform Competition; Multi-homing; Information Transparency; Daily Deals; Groupon; LivingSocial; Digital Platforms; Information; Competition

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November 2020 (Revised April 2021)
Case

Roll-Ups and Surprise Billing: Collisions at the Intersection of Private Equity and Patient Care

By: Trevor Fetter and Kira Seiger

This case describes the increasing investment by private equity (PE) firms in patient care and other healthcare services. The case focuses on investments in physician staffing firms and roll-up strategy investments in physician practice management (PPM). Included in... View Details

August 2019 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Systems Design West

By: Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

Jenn Braus (HBS 2013) was halfway through the 90-day exclusivity period for her proposed acquisition of Systems Design West (SDW). She had completed her business and accounting due diligence. Just as she was about to ask her lawyer to begin drafting the purchase... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Price; Negotiation Offer; Decision Making

February 2019 (Revised December 2019)
Case

ThirdLove

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Matthew G. Preble

Keywords: Cohort Behavior; Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC); Lifetime Value (LTV)

March 2018
Teaching Note

Augmedix

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Teaching Note for HBS No. 817-048. Augmedix provides a service that live-streams video of patient appointments to a remote scribe, freeing up significant physician time from electronic medical record data-entry tasks. The venture is confronting decisions in areas such... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Sales; Management; Marketing Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Adoption; Customers; Segmentation; Health Industry; Technology Industry; United States

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