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  • March 2023
  • Case

Interior Collab
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
After venture capital-funded online interior design agency Homepolish collapsed, its former freelance designers met to discuss next steps. The bitter experience led some of them to create a workers’ collaborative called Interior Collab. The founding members needed to...  View Details
Keywords: Business Exit or Shutdown; Business Model; Entrepreneurship; Human Capital; Growth and Development Strategy; Cooperative Ownership; Employee Ownership; Trust; Service Industry; Technology Industry; United States; New York (city, NY)
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  • February 2023
  • Case

Enstitute
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Kumba Sennaar and Sarah Mehta
Shaila Ittycheria (MBA ’10) founded the nonprofit organization Enstitute, in 2012 in New York City. Determined to challenge the status quo within higher education, Shaila and her cofounder sought to expand opportunities for talented young people by placing them in...  View Details
Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Operations; Business Startups; Business Growth and Maturation; Education Industry; Employment Industry; United States
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  • January 2023
  • Case

Kavnia Coffee
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Kumba Sennaar, Sarah Mehta and Jiyoon Han
Case on a coffee hardware startup where a series of experiments and pivots led founder to conclude that the venture was no longer viable.  View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Operations; Business Startups; Failure; Business Exit or Shutdown; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States
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  • January 2023
  • Case

Proday: Calling the Right Play
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
Sarah Kunst knew the elements of a successful startup from her tenure at venture capital firms. In April 2018, however, her own app – Proday, a home fitness platform featuring exercises filmed by professional sports stars – was floundering. Kunst theorized that...  View Details
Keywords: Social Media; Entrepreneurship; Advertising; Digital Marketing; Product Launch; Social Marketing; Failure; Sports; Applications and Software; Business Startups; Technology Industry; United States
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  • February 2022 (Revised October 2022)
  • Case

Ample Hills Creamery
By: Tom Eisenmann, Lindsay N. Hyde and Tom Quinn
Ample Hills Creamery started in 2010 as a temporary ice cream pushcart in Brooklyn, New York City. On the strength of inventive flavors and clever marketing, husband-and-wife founders Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna built a premium, artisanal dessert empire of 16 retail...  View Details
Keywords: Brands and Branding; Business Growth and Maturation; Partners and Partnerships; Logistics; Profit; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Food and Beverage Industry
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  • February 2022
  • Case

Launching the Social
By: Tom Eisenmann, Lindsay N. Hyde and Tom Quinn
This case features the same protagonists as Ample Hills Creamery (HBS No. 822-073), and can be used as a continuation of that story.
Ample Hills Creamery started in 2010 as a temporary ice cream pushcart in Brooklyn, New York City. On the strength of inventive...  View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Small Business; Brands and Branding; Partners and Partnerships; Expansion
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  • February 2022
  • Case

Agora (A)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
Agora was a civic technology (civic tech) startup founded by Elsa Sze, who wanted to enhance the connection between political officials and their constituents by facilitating virtual “town halls,” making underrepresented voices heard and benefiting elected and...  View Details
Keywords: Civic Technology; Government Administration; Conferences; Business Startups; Business Strategy
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  • February 2022
  • Supplement

Agora (B)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
This is the conclusion to Agora (A), where founder Elsa Sze decides if she wants to continue investing energy in her civic technology startup.
Agora was a civic technology (civic tech) startup founded by Elsa Sze, who wanted to enhance the connection between...  View Details
Keywords: Civic Technology; Government Administration; Conferences; Business Startups; Business Strategy
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  • January 2022
  • Case

Dating Ring
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Lindsay N. Hyde
In 2015, the co-founders of Dating Ring, an online dating startup that relied on human matchmakers to arrange dates between its members, were deciding whether to either shut down the service or instead manage Dating Ring as a "lifestyle company," ramping down growth...  View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Failure; Business Exit or Shutdown; Internet and the Web; Venture Capital; Service Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States
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  • December 2021 (Revised January 2023)
  • Case

Katerra (A)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
In April 2020, Katerra executives struggled with a series of decisions that would determine the fate of one of the best-funded construction startups in history. Katerra was founded in 2015 by technology-industry executive Michael Marks and commercial real estate...  View Details
Keywords: Business Startups; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Entrepreneurship; Failure; Construction; Real Estate Industry; Technology Industry; United States
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  • December 2021 (Revised January 2023)
  • Supplement

Katerra (B)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
In May 2020, SoftBank executives, having invested nearly $2 billion in Katerra, decided the vision of an end-to-end, vertically-integrated construction process was worth saving—with some major changes to company structure. The SoftBank Vision Fund invested $200 million...  View Details
Keywords: Business Startups; Failure; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Entrepreneurship; Construction; Real Estate Industry; Construction Industry; Technology Industry; United States
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  • 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
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  • December 2021
  • Supplement

Troverie (B)
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Lindsay N. Hyde and Olivia Graham
Resolves the questions raised in Troverie (A); recounts pivots and efforts to raise capital from strategic investors and sell Troverie; and shares the founder's post-mortem reflections on what went wrong and what he might have done differently.  View Details
Keywords: Startup; Failed Startup; Luxury Goods; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Failure; Luxury; Fashion Industry; United States
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  • 2021
  • Book

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann
Why Startups Fail explores entrepreneurial failure, examining its predictable patterns, how to avoid them, and how to cope when failure does occur. Part I looks at three common failure patterns for early-stage startups, illustrating each with an anchor case...  View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Failure; Success; Framework
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  • June 2021
  • Case

uBiome
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Olivia Graham
uBiome provided clinical tests that sequenced the DNA of human microbiome samples, providing data on health conditions directly to consumers or to prescribing physicians. Founded in 2012, the San Francisco-based startup raised $105 million from top-tier venture capital...  View Details
Keywords: Business Startups; Crime and Corruption; Insolvency and Bankruptcy
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  • May–June 2021
  • Article

Why Start-ups Fail
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann
If you’re launching a business, the odds are against you: Two-thirds of start-ups never show a positive return. Unnerved by that statistic, a professor of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School set out to discover why. Based on interviews and surveys with hundreds...  View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Problems and Challenges; Failure
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  • January 2021
  • Case

YogaSmoga
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Olivia Graham
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  • 2020
  • Working Paper

Determinants of Early-Stage Startup Performance: Survey Results
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann
To explore determinants of new venture performance, the CEOs of 470 early-stage startups were surveyed regarding a broad range of factors related to their venture’s customer value proposition, product management, marketing, technology and operations, financial...  View Details
Keywords: Startups; Survey Research; Performance Analysis; Entrepreneurship; Performance; Analysis; Business Startups; Failure; Surveys
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  • August 2020
  • Teaching Note

Updating Dating
By: Scott Duke Kominers, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alan Lam
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 818-052.  View Details
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  • March 2020
  • Supplement

Poppy (B)
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Scott Duke Kominers, Jeff Huizinga and Allison Ciechanover
Avni Patel Thompson, founder and CEO of Poppy, an online marketplace for on-demand childcare, revisits the venture's final months, and discusses the steps she took in the wake of the shutdown. This case explores experiments the company conducted to refine its original...  View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Marketplace Matching; Business Model; Business Exit or Shutdown; Personal Development and Career; United States
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