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- January 2025
- Case
Untapped Global: Financing Africa's Missing Middle
By: Raymond Kluender and Emanuele Colonnelli
In November 2024, Jim Chu, founder and CEO of Untapped Global, faced mounting internal tensions over the company’s strategic direction. Untapped had developed a data-driven revenue-based financing (RBF) model to address the “missing middle” problem—the $5.2 trillion... View Details
Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Venture Capital; Working Capital; Private Equity; Financial Strategy; Microfinance; International Finance; Currency Exchange Rate; Profit Sharing; Revenue; Developing Countries and Economies; Economic Growth; Emerging Markets; Mission and Purpose; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Africa; Nigeria; South Africa; Kenya; Uganda; California; San Francisco
- December 2024
- Case
Core Innovation Capital: Investing in Fintech for Good
In 2017, Arjan Schütte, founder of Core Innovation Capital, faced a decision on whether to invest in Hugo Insurance, an auto insurance startup. Core, an early-stage social impact VC firm, focused on “fintech for good,” by investing in financial services for low- to... View Details
- December 2024
- Supplement
Core Innovation Capital: Investing in Fintech for Good (B)
In 2017, Core Innovation Capital invested $725,000 in Hugo Insurance, a pay-as-you-drive auto insurance startup targeting the non-standard market. Core followed with $300,000 in 2019 during a Seed II round. By 2022, Hugo founder, David Bergendahl, sought $10 million in... View Details
- April 2024
- Article
Pay-As-You-Go Insurance: Experimental Evidence on Consumer Demand and Behavior
By: Raymond Kluender
Pay-as-you-go contracts reduce minimum purchase requirements which may increase market participation. We randomize the introduction and price(s) of a novel pay-as-you-go contract to the California auto insurance market where 17 percent of drivers are uninsured. The... View Details
- March 2024
- Supplement
ELCA's Series A Cap Table Exercise (Instructor Version)
By: Raymond Kluender and Anke Becker
In ELCA, the company must decide between two term sheets: one put forth by STV and one put forth by ESV.
This exercise is an analysis of the implications of these two term sheets on the ownership structure and the payouts of common and preferred... View Details
This exercise is an analysis of the implications of these two term sheets on the ownership structure and the payouts of common and preferred... View Details
- February 2024
- Case
Chime Solutions
Just two years after launching its 10k by 2020 initiative to hire 10,000 employees by 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Chief Executive Officer Mark Wilson to send nearly all of his staff at Chime Solutions (Chime) to work from home. Chime was a customer contact firm... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
An Organizational Dilemma: A Framework for Considering and Countering Racism by Formal Organizations
By: Summer R. Jackson, Ray Reagans and Ezra Zuckerman Sivan
- 2020
- Working Paper
Bankruptcy and the COVID-19 Crisis
By: Jialan Wang, Jeyul Yang, Benjamin Iverson and Raymond Kluender
We examine the impact of the COVID-19 economic crisis on business and consumer bankruptcies in the United States using real-time data on the universe of filings. Historically, bankruptcies have closely tracked the business cycle and contemporaneous unemployment rates.... View Details
- December 2019 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Ray White
By: Boris Groysberg and Tricia Gregg
Ray White is an Australian real estate business that has been owned and operated by the White family for four generations. The business has expanded and prospered. However, as the industry faces new challenges and opportunities, how should the White family respond?... View Details
- 2018
- Book
Food Citizenship: Food System Advocates in an Era of Distrust
By: Ray A. Goldberg
The global food system is the largest segment of the world's economy. As agribusiness-studies pioneer Ray Goldberg suggests, it is also the largest health system on the planet. And it is changing fast. Its size and importance to human, environmental, and economic... View Details
- March 2015 (Revised March 2018)
- Case
Zipongo: Improving Health by Redesigning the Food Chain
By: Ray A. Goldberg, Juan Enriquez and Kevin Liang
- February 2014
- Article
Governance and CEO Turnover: Do Something or Do the Right Thing?
By: Ray Fisman, Rakesh Khurana, Matthew Rhodes-Kropf and Soojin Yim
We study how corporate governance affects firm value through the decision of whether to fire or retain the CEO. We present a model in which weak governance—which prevents shareholders from controlling the board—protects inferior CEOs from dismissal, while at the same... View Details
- December 2013 (Revised April 2014)
- Case
Seeding Growth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
By: Ray Goldberg, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Djordjija Petkoski
By 2013, the agricultural sector in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) had long suffered from war, political instability, and dilapidated infrastructure. A country with 75 million inhabitants and the second lowest GDP per capita in the world in 2011, the DRC's... View Details
Keywords: National Agricultural Investment Plan (PNIA); Developing Agriculture; World Bank; Poverty Reduction; Special Economic Zones (SEZs); Small-scale Farmers; Agricultural Business Parks; Agriculture Reform; Agribusiness; Economic Growth; Infrastructure; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Africa; Congo, Democratic Republic of the
- December 2012
- Background Note
Are Daily Deals Good for Merchants?
By: Sunil Gupta, Timothy Keiningham, Ray Weaver and Luke Williams
In the relatively short time since Groupon was founded, the response to "daily deals"—services that promote businesses by marketing deeply discounted, pre-paid vouchers to an online subscriber base—has by all accounts been spectacular. Our evaluation of daily deals is... View Details
- December 2012 (Revised August 2013)
- Case
Nestlé: Agricultural Material Sourcing Within the Concept of Creating Shared Value (CSV)
By: Ray A. Goldberg and Lorin A. Fries
Corporate Head of Agriculture Hans Jöhr's mind raced in anticipation of the executive board meeting that afternoon. Jöhr recognized the meeting as a key opportunity to strategize far into the future, reexamining how his team's efforts in sustainable agricultural... View Details
- November 2012
- Teaching Note
Groupon (TN)
By: Sunil Gupta, Ray Weaver and Yien Hao Lock
On November 4, 2011, Groupon, a marketing services company that promoted local businesses by selling deeply discounted vouchers for their products and services, completed its initial public offering that valued the company at $17 billion. Within a year Groupon's share... View Details
- March 2011 (Revised August 2012)
- Case
Groupon
By: Sunil Gupta, Ray Weaver and Dharmishta Rood
On November 4, 2011, Groupon, a marketing services company that promoted local businesses by selling deeply discounted vouchers for their products and services, completed its initial public offering that valued the company at $17 billion. Within a year Groupon's share... View Details
- September 2010
- Case
Merck: Investing in Science-Based Business (Abridged)
By: Ananth Raman and Inga Katharina Maurer
Ray Gilmartin faces a dilemma. His company's credibility has been damaged by the recent withdrawal of Vioxx, a multi-billion dollar drug. Moreover, the withdrawal of Vioxx would imply that Merck would fail to meet analysts' earnings expectations for 2005 unless... View Details
- April 2009
- Case
Merck: Managing Vioxx (A)
By: Robert L. Simons, Kathryn Rosenberg and Natalie Kindred
This two-class case series allows students to stand in the shoes of CEO Ray Gilmartin during the unfolding stages of a reputational crisis. Merck's mission statement claims to "put patients first," but the company is widely criticized for putting profit before patient... View Details
- December 2002 (Revised May 2003)
- Case
Fonterra: Taking on the Dairy World
By: Ray A. Goldberg and Jose M. M. Porraz
Fonterra was a cooperatively owned dairy company--New Zealand's largest company and the world's largest exporter of dairy products. To maintain its leadership, Fonterra had to respond to increased competition, new consumer tastes, consolidation of its customers, and... View Details