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- December 2022
- Case
Ribbit Capital and the Gauntlet Investment Opportunity
By: Shai Bernstein and Allison M. Ciechanover
Ten-year-old, Palo Alto-based Ribbit Capital is best-known for its global investments in fintech. The firm was also an early advocate of crypto and blockchain, having invested in more than two dozen startups in the space in the past decade. In the Spring of 2022,...
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Keywords:
Financial Services Industry
- June 2022
- Case
Zalando: Becoming the Starting Point for Fashion
By: Antonio Moreno, Leela Nageswaran, Emilie Billaud and Federica Gabrieli
Born in 2008 as a small startup selling flip flops, by mid-2021 Zalando had turned into an online fashion company with an assortment of more than 4,500 international brands, 45 million active customers, and a presence in 23 European markets. An essential component in...
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Keywords:
Transition;
Customer Value and Value Chain;
Digital Platforms;
Distribution;
Order Taking and Fulfillment;
Infrastructure;
Logistics;
Service Operations;
Strategy;
Business Strategy;
Fashion Industry;
Apparel and Accessories Industry;
Beauty and Cosmetics Industry;
Distribution Industry;
Retail Industry;
Service Industry;
Shipping Industry;
Technology Industry;
Europe
- May 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
LOOP: Driving Change in Auto Insurance Pricing
By: Elie Ofek and Alicia Dadlani
John Henry and Carey Anne Nadeau, co-founders and co-CEOs of LOOP, an insurtech startup based in Austin, Texas, were on a mission to modernize the archaic $250 billion automobile insurance market. They sought to create equitably priced insurance by eliminating pricing...
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- May 2022
- Case
Founder Collective
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
FC launched in 2009 with a clear mission: to be the most aligned fund for founders at the seed stage. In keeping with its mission, FC maintained smaller fund sizes and was not a lifecycle investor. By November of 2021, however, the seed market had gotten more...
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- May 2022
- Case
From GOP to NFT: Anthony Scaramucci and the Launch of Flatter NFT
By: Lauren Cohen, Richard Ryffel and Grace Headinger
Anthony Scaramucci, Managing Director of SkyBridge Capital, considered whether he should officially greenlight the launch of SkyBridge’s own NFT platform — Flatter NFT. He had led the investment firm to push first into Bitcoin and then Ethereum to make SkyBridge a...
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Keywords:
Business Startup;
Fintech;
Technology;
Cryptocurrency;
Web3;
Business Startups;
Volatility;
Decision Making;
Entertainment;
Entrepreneurship;
Investment;
Strategic Planning;
Adoption;
Competitive Advantage;
Technology Adoption;
Finance;
Currency;
Banking Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
Technology Industry;
New York (city, NY)
- April 2022
- Case
Pear Venture Capital
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
Keith Bender, Principal at Pear Venture Capital, is working over the weekend to prepare for a Monday morning investment meeting. He has three startup pitch decks in front of him, and he must choose one to recommend at the meeting. He finds that each company has its...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
Transferable Skills? Founders as Venture Capitalists
By: Paul A. Gompers and Vladimir Mukharlyamov
In this paper we explore whether or not the experience as a founder of a venture capital-backed startup influences the performance of founders who become venture capitalists (VCs). We find that nearly 7% of VCs were previously founders of a venture-backed startup....
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- March 2022
- Case
DealShare: Social E-Commerce for the Indian Mass Market
By: Krishna G. Palepu and Malini Sen
Launched in September 2018, e-retail startup DealShare has created a tech-enabled model for the Indian mass market that allows customers to buy together, save money on good quality goods, and at the same time have fun. It targets customers who are still getting used to...
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- March 2022 (Revised April 2022)
- Teaching Note
Spotify's Audio-First Strategy: Leading the Podcasting Market
By: Hong Luo and Carol Lin
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 721-439. Within 15 years, CEO Daniel Ek had led Spotify from an ambitious startup to a multi-billion dollar company that had transformed the music industry. As part of Spotify’s next phase of growth, the platform would invest heavily in...
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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...
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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...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
The Transformation of Self Employment
By: Innessa Colaiacovo, Margaret Dalton, Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr
Over the past half-century, while self-employment has consistently accounted for around one in ten of the United States workforce, its composition has changed. Since 1970, industries with high startup capital requirements have declined from 53% of self-employment to...
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- December 2021
- 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...
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- December 2021
- 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...
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- December 2021
- Case
Green Monday
By: José B. Alvarez, Billy Chan and Dawn H. Lau
This case describes the entrepreneurial journey of David Yeung, from campaigning for plant-based diets to building Green Monday, a purpose-driven business and an ecosystem based in Hong Kong comprising a retail platform, an alternative meat brand (“OmniPork”), a...
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- October 2021
- Case
Unshrinking the Pie: Desirée Stolar's Negotiation Saga (A)
By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green
When Desirée (“Des”) Stolar’s wool sweater shrank two sizes, the Harvard Business School student worked with classmates to develop a solution that both fixed her problem and launched Unshrinkit, a successful consumer goods company with a widely-available product for...
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- October 2021
- Supplement
Unshrinking the Pie: Desirée Stolar's Negotiation Saga (B)
By: James K. Sebenius and Alex Green
When Desirée (“Des”) Stolar’s wool sweater shrank two sizes, the Harvard Business School student worked with classmates to develop a solution that both fixed her problem and launched Unshrinkit, a successful consumer goods company with a widely-available product for...
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- September 2021
- Case
Harambe: Mobilizing Capital in Africa
By: Anywhere (Siko) Sikochi, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Francesco Tronci
Harambe was a non-profit organization whose mission was to build an ecosystem to identify promising young African entrepreneurs and provide them access to training, markets, capital, and support networks. From 2007 to 2021, Harambe had grown to a network of 367...
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- September 2021
- 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...
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Keywords:
Business Startups;
Business Growth and Maturation;
Business Model;
Business Plan;
Disruption;
Transformation;
Trends;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Customer Relationship Management;
Decision Making;
Cost vs Benefits;
Decisions;
Entrepreneurship;
Venture Capital;
Equity;
Executive Compensation;
Recruitment;
Selection and Staffing;
Disruptive Innovation;
Technological Innovation;
Job Interviews;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Ownership Stake;
Opportunities;
Applications and Software;
Technology Adoption;
Technology Industry;
Web Services Industry;
New York (city, NY);
California;
France
- September 2021 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
MAYA Capital
By: Robert F. White, Carla Larangeira and Pedro Levindo
MAYA Capital co-founders Lara Lemann and Monica Saggioro raised $41.5 million through a series of closings for their early-stage Latin American venture capital fund. The two women had met for the first time in mid-2016 when Lemann was contemplating scaling her angel...
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