Entrepreneurial Management
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- January 2025
- Article
Everyone Steps Back?: The Widespread Retraction of Crowd-Funding Support for Minority Creators When Migration Fear Is High
By: John (Jianqui) Bai, William R. Kerr, Chi Wan and Alptug YorulmazWe study funding gaps on Kickstarter across multiple ethnic groups from 2009 to 2021. Scaling the concept of racially salient events, we quantify the close co-movement of minority funding gaps in crowd-funding to inflamed political rhetoric surrounding migration. The funding gap for minorities more than doubles in the most inflamed periods compared to baseline. Results are especially acute for Hispanic creators. Distant, mostly white backers are typically important for projects reaching a critical threshold of funding support. Retractions in support for minority creators during tense periods are even spatially, as present in liberal cities as in conservative ones.
- January 2025
- Article
Everyone Steps Back?: The Widespread Retraction of Crowd-Funding Support for Minority Creators When Migration Fear Is High
By: John (Jianqui) Bai, William R. Kerr, Chi Wan and Alptug YorulmazWe study funding gaps on Kickstarter across multiple ethnic groups from 2009 to 2021. Scaling the concept of racially salient events, we quantify the close co-movement of minority funding gaps in crowd-funding to inflamed political rhetoric surrounding migration. The funding gap for minorities more than doubles in the most inflamed periods...
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- November 2024
- Case
Tim Ferriss: What Might This Look Like If It Were Easy?
By: Reza Satchu and Denise Koller- November 2024
- Case
Tim Ferriss: What Might This Look Like If It Were Easy?
By: Reza Satchu and Denise Koller
About the Unit
The Entrepreneurial Management Unit strives to raise the level of academic work in the field of entrepreneurship, in methodological rigor, conceptual depth, and managerial applicability. We also strive to improve the odds of entrepreneurial success for our students and for practitioners worldwide.
Because it is such a complex phenomenon, entrepreneurship must be studied through multiple lenses. We use three.
- The process of entrepreneurship - We seek to understand the processes of entrepreneurial activity in start-ups and established firms by examining the antecedents and consequences of various forms of entrepreneurial opportunity identification and opportunity pursuit for individuals, organizations, and industries. We see experimentation and innovation in products, services, processes, and business models as central to entrepreneurial activity.
- The finance of entrepreneurship - We seek to understand the financing of entrepreneurial ventures by studying the antecedents and consequences of entrepreneurial funding decisions both domestically and internationally.
- The context of entrepreneurship - We seek to understand the ways in which entrepreneurs both respond to and shape the context in which they operate, by examining the history of entrepreneurship across time and national borders and by analyzing the legal and cultural contexts for managerial action.
Please also visit the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.
Recent Publications
Everyone Steps Back?: The Widespread Retraction of Crowd-Funding Support for Minority Creators When Migration Fear Is High
By: John (Jianqui) Bai, William R. Kerr, Chi Wan and Alptug Yorulmaz
- January 2025 |
- Article |
- Research Policy
We study funding gaps on Kickstarter across multiple ethnic groups from 2009 to 2021. Scaling the concept of racially salient events, we quantify the close co-movement of minority funding gaps in crowd-funding to inflamed political rhetoric surrounding migration. The funding gap for minorities more than doubles in the most inflamed periods compared to baseline. Results are especially acute for Hispanic creators. Distant, mostly white backers are typically important for projects reaching a critical threshold of funding support. Retractions in support for minority creators during tense periods are even spatially, as present in liberal cities as in conservative ones.
Mercado Bitcoin: M&A, IPO, or Series B?
By: Raymond Kluender, Emanuele Colonnelli and Sabrina Howell
- November 2024 |
- Teaching Note |
- Faculty Research
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 825-047. In April 2021, Brazilian cryptocurrency platform Mercado Bitcoin, had to decide how to scale: go public, M&A with a bank, or take a VC big check. In a highly volatile market, Roberto Dagnoni, chairman of the board, viewed the unprecedent crypto momentum as a window of opportunity for achieving the liquidity they needed to accelerate the company’s expansion plans. In a striking twist of events for Mercado Bitcoin, which had just closed a challenging Series-A capital round after a year of hard negotiations, while considering an Initial Public Offering (IPO), the company was approached by the M&A teams of two large banks. And SoftBank, the largest-ever technology-focused fund in Latin America, presented a tempting term sheet. The case goes through the history of Mercado Bitcoin, from being the first Brazilian cryptocurrency exchange platform into becoming one of the largest crypto asset exchanges in Latin America; the challenges faced throughout it, from market swings to the lack of regulatory infrastructure; up to the dilemma point, presenting the cons and pros of the three options, viewing the company’s insights, revenue forecasts, and comparatives of reference companies.
Keywords: Business Ventures; Mergers and Acquisitions; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Decision Making; Going Public; Ownership Stake; Strategic Planning; Venture Capital; Problems and Challenges; Business Cycles; Digital Platforms; Emerging Markets; Market Timing; Expansion; Diversification; Value; Valuation; Value Creation; Investment Funds; Initial Public Offering; Price; Price Bubble; Negotiation Offer; Information Technology Industry; Financial Services Industry
MiDAS: Automating Unemployment Benefits
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
- November 2024 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Why Has Construction Productivity Stagnated? The Role of Land-Use Regulation
By: Leonardo D’Amico, Edward Glaeser, Joseph Gyourko, William Kerr and Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto
- 2024 |
- Working Paper |
- Faculty Research
We document a Kuznets curve for construction productivity in 20th-century America. Homes built per construction worker remained stagnant between 1900 and 1940, boomed after World War II, and then plummeted after 1970. The productivity boom from 1940 to 1970 shows that nothing makes technological progress inherently impossible in construction. What stopped it? We present a model in which local land-use controls limit the size of building projects. This constraint reduces the equilibrium size of construction companies, reducing both scale economies and incentives to invest in innovation. Our model shows that, in a competitive industry, such inefficient reductions in firm size and technology investment are a distinctive consequence of restrictive project regulation, while classic regulatory barriers to entry increase firm size. The model is consistent with an extensive series of key facts about the nature of the construction sector. The post-1970 productivity decline coincides with increases in our best proxies for land-use regulation. The size of development projects is small today and has declined over time. The size of construction firms is also quite small, especially relative to other goods-producing firms, and smaller builders are less productive. Areas with stricter land use regulation have particularly small and unproductive construction establishments. Patenting activity in construction stagnated and diverged from other sectors. A back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates that, if half of the observed link between establishment size and productivity is causal, America’s residential construction firms would be approximately 60 percent more productive if their size distribution matched that of manufacturing.
Tim Ferriss: What Might This Look Like If It Were Easy?
By: Reza Satchu and Denise Koller
- November 2024 |
- Case |
- Faculty Research
Advice and the Bayesian Entrepreneur
By: Susan Cohen and Rembrand Koning
- 2024 |
- Working Paper |
- Faculty Research
Bayesian entrepreneurship starts from the premise that entrepreneurs’ beliefs guide their theorizing, experimentation, and choices (Agrawal et al., n.d.). Since each entrepreneur has unique beliefs based on their own set of past experiences, cognitive ability, and disposition, individual entrepreneurs are likely to take different actions even if they stumble upon the same entrepreneurial opportunity. Beyond initial beliefs, Bayesian entrepreneurship is rooted in the idea that experimentation can be a valuable tool to update beliefs and improve choices. From the Bayesian perspective, any purposeful information gathering activity testing the promise of a new venture or strategy—from seeking advice to A/B tests—can be treated as a Bayesian experiment (Kerr, Nanda, and Rhodes-Kropf 2014; Agrawal et al., n.d.).
Leadership and Plumbing
- November 2024 |
- Article |
- Top Sales Magazine
“Leadership” is a growth industry. Amazon lists over 60,000 books on the topic. Most focus on emotional intelligence, charisma, avoiding narcissism (usually someone else’s problem, according to these authors, not their problem) and other personality traits. But as organizational scholar James March once put it, “Leadership involves plumbing as well as poetry.” His point was that, whatever else they do, effective leaders help busy people in their firms to deal with the business problems or opportunities they face and so increase their contributions and productivity. This is especially true when it comes to a core activity like customer acquisition and retention. But surveys indicate a growing gap between C-Suite leaders and their customer-facing people and processes. This article discusses how to establish and maintain good organizational plumbing in areas like communicating priorities and establishing a two-way process between C-Suite and front-line sales leaders.
Keywords: Leadership Development
Teamworks: Tackling a Forecasting Fumble
By: Lou Shipley and Stacy Straaberg
- October 2024 |
- Teaching Plan |
- Faculty Research
In late March 2018, Teamworks CEO Zach Maurides learned Q1 2018 sales were at risk for a large forecasting miss. Founded in 2004, Teamworks’s software application assisted support staff in messaging, scheduling, and sharing documents with collegiate and professional athletes. The company served 550 customers (made up of 2,000 teams), first signing collegiate sports teams and athletic departments before branching out to sports governing bodies and professional sports teams and leagues. The size of the Q1 forecasting miss was related to a still-pending contract with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the largest deal in Teamworks’s history. Teamworks Vice President of Sales Corey Richardson was working on a backup plan, but with little time left in the quarter, it was possible Teamworks would close Q1 with sales of $303,714 (33%) out of a $910,000 forecast. The forecasting issue was especially worrisome since Teamworks had recently earned a premium valuation during its Series B funding round and Maurides was preparing for a board of directors meeting that included Teamworks’s new lead investor. Before this point, Teamworks’s forecasts had been close to target. What had happened? And how would Maurides share the news with the board?
Keywords: Acquisition; Business Growth and Maturation; Communication Strategy; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Business Cycles; Technological Innovation; Sports; Growth and Development Strategy; Resource Allocation; Marketing; Sales; Business Strategy; Expansion; Sports Industry; Technology Industry; United States; North Carolina
Harvard Business Publishing
Seminars & Conferences
- 04 Dec 2024
Matthew Bidwell, The Wharton School, The University of Pennsylvania
Entrepreneurial Management Seminar