Entrepreneurial Management

- 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 Yorulmaz

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.
- 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 Yorulmaz

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...
- December 2024
- Case
Palantir: Aligning Decisions with Values

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Cameron Stone
- December 2024
- Case
Palantir: Aligning Decisions with Values

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Cameron Stone
- December 2024
- Case
Brainstorming a MVP for a Peloton Corporate Wellness Benefit

By: Sara McKinley Torti
- December 2024
- Case
Brainstorming a MVP for a Peloton Corporate Wellness Benefit

By: Sara McKinley Torti

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.

Keywords: Crowdfunding; Prejudice and Bias; Race; Immigration; Public Opinion

Citation

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Palantir: Aligning Decisions with Values

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Cameron Stone

December 2024 |
Case |
Faculty Research

Citation

Educators

Brainstorming a MVP for a Peloton Corporate Wellness Benefit

By: Sara McKinley Torti

December 2024 |
Case |
Faculty Research

Citation

Educators

Core Innovation Capital: Investing in Fintech for Good (B)

By: Ray Kluender, Natalia Rigol, Benjamin Roth and Nicole Tempest Keller

December 2024 |
Supplement |
Faculty Research

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 Series A funding at a $30 million valuation, inviting Core to lead with a $5 million investment. Despite early promise, Hugo faced state licensure delays, high customer acquisition costs, technical issues, churn, and the loss of a key carrier partner. While Bergendahl expressed optimism about progress, Core’s managing partner, Arjan Schütte, had to weigh the firm’s stricter follow-on investment criteria against the risk of diluting ownership if Hugo succeeded.

Keywords: Venture Capital; Social Entrepreneurship; Insurance; Measurement and Metrics; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Insurance Industry; United States

Citation

Managing the Future of Work: Course Overview Note for Students

By: Christopher Stanton

December 2024 |
Course Overview Note |
Faculty Research

Citation

Respect for Improvements and Comparative Statics in Matching Markets

By: Scott Kominers

December 2024 |
Article |
Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design

One of the oldest results in the theory of two-sided matching is the entry comparative static, which shows that under the Gale-Shapley deferred acceptance algorithm, adding a new agent to one side of the market makes all the agents on the other side weakly better off. Here, we give a new proof of the entry comparative static, by way of a well-known property of deferred acceptance called respect for improvements. Our argument extends to yield comparative static results in more general settings, such as matching with slot-specific preferences.

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Marketplace Matching; Mathematical Methods; Market Design

Citation

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Charting (and Updating) the Path: A Bayesian Perspective on Entrepreneurial Learning

By: Joshua L. Krieger

2024 |
Working Paper |
Faculty Research

This chapter explores two distinct modes of entrepreneurial learning: assessing venture viability and choosing between alternative development paths. It introduces a framework for decomposing venture viability into technological feasibility, commercial potential and development costs, while highlighting how entrepreneurs and investors may have divergent beliefs about these components. The chapter then presents a novel approach for visualizing and analyzing multiple potential development paths, incorporating factors such as independent project characteristics, learning spillovers, and development distances between paths. By integrating these elements, the framework allows entrepreneurs to make more informed decisions about initial paths and subsequent pivots, moving beyond simple heuristics to a more comprehensive understanding of tradeoffs and relative values across different development strategies.

Keywords: Decision Making; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Learning

Citation

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