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Stephane Kasriel, the CEO of Upwork, the leading platform for freelance labor, updates his progress on how to redesign its business model in 2019.

Israel-based startup providing actionable air pollution data wrestles with which markets and customers to focus on.

By 2019, leaders from the public and private sector had become increasingly anxious about how advanced technologies and aging global populations could affect labor markets, workplaces, and workers' lives. Some analysts forecasted that hundreds of millions of workers would have their jobs threatened by automation. Questions about how relevant stakeholders (e.g., workers, firms, NGOs) should respond to those threats created a new field of study called the "Future of Work." Comparing current forecasts to historical episodes of workers getting automated, many commentators wondered "will this time be different?" Despite so much uncertainty on the topic, many leaders concluded that they would need to collaborate across sectors to address many different challenges, such as rapid technological changes and evolving labor markets.

By 2017, GoFundMe is the world's largest social fundraising platform. Gross donation volume is growing rapidly yet the number of monthly campaign starts is relatively flat. The CEO contemplates a variety of growth initiatives.

The CEO of a California-based craft brewery manages new partnership with-and potential acquisition by-industry giant Heineken.

Autonomous vehicles have enormous implications for business and society. But, despite the headline-laden attention paid to the technology, there remain more questions than answers. Students will learn about the complex industry and have explicit discussions about the factors influencing development and commercialization and how various stakeholders might respond. They will also be put in the shoes of decision-makers looking for signals that might help them prepare for the disruptive change ahead.

In fall 2017, HTC CEO and Chairperson Cher Wang was driving the company to focus on virtual reality (VR). HTC's first VR product, VIVE, released in spring 2016, was applauded for its superior immersive room-scale capabilities. However, early adoption of VR beyond gamers and technology enthusiasts was off to a slower start in general to due high cost, lack of quality content, and some user discomfort while using the technology. Wang endeavors to be the leading VR company though competition from Sony, Facebook, and other technology leaders is mounting and several, like HTC, are already pursuing second generation tetherless VR technology. As Wang seeks to develop the ecosystem by partnering with developers, creating a content platform, investing in VR startups, and launching VR arcades, she must decide the appropriate balance of fostering innovation in hardware, software and services, or both.

This case is about Tinder. It discusses different business models and ways of structuring the initial team. With a $6 million investment from IAC/Interactive in 2010, Dinesh Moorjani founded Hatch Labs to build mobile apps. His mission was to attract entrepreneurial talent to work on Lab projects which, after gaining traction, could be acquired by IAC or spun out as independent companies. To pitch talent to work at Hatch, Moorjani laid out a framework to compare the expected returns to founding an independent company versus joining an incubator. While Hatch provided lower levels of equity ownership in a single company, Moorjani argued that the complementary inputs provided by the Lab and the diversification from holding equity in the portfolio of Lab projects made the incubator structure attractive. After growing several projects from different teams, at the end of the case, Moorjani faces two critical choices: Should he support a B2B merchant services business or a dating app, Glow (a disguised name for Tinder). Second, should he go forward with a second Hatch Labs? Was the success of the first Hatch experiment replicable? The case can be supplemented with a startup valuation Exercise (#818-705), and a technical/background note on "Valuing Employee Equity at Early Stage Ventures" (#819-167).

In the fall of 2016, the management team at thredUP, the largest U.S. online retailer of secondhand clothing, is deciding whether to expand into international markets. Over the past 12 months the 7-year old startup, which had raised over $130 million in venture capital, had seen revenue grow 100% and gross margin double. Would moving abroad expand thredUP's total addressable market and help position the company for an IPO? Or would it prove a distraction, derailing momentum in the core U.S. business?

The case explores the attempt of Shervin Pishevar, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, to shepherd hyperloop, a futuristic pod-in-tube transportation technology, from concept to transformative reality via Hyperloop One and Sherpa Capital, both companies he co-founded. The case outlines the technology-first brought to widespread attention by Tesla and SpaceX executive Elon Musk-then follows Pishevar as he builds a team, develops prototypes, recruits investors and partners, and navigates the many obstacles in pursuit of this "moonshot." Students are presented wih historical parallels and precedents that may illuminate certain aspects of the challenge.

In the summer of 2016, wearables 'wunderkind' and Pebble founder and CEO, Eric Migicovsky, was pleased with the young startup's success in the five years since its founding. The Silicon Valley-based company had recently shipped its two millionth smartwatch; held the record for three of the four highest Kickstarter campaigns ever (raising cumulatively over $40 million on the site); launched its first non-watch product dubbed a "wearables game changer;" and enjoyed a loyal customer base, particularly among technology early adopters and the community of software developers that created applications and watch faces for its products. Nonetheless, the young company faced a variety of challenges. The nascent smartwatch industry recently saw a dramatic uptick in competition. Apple had introduced its smartwatch the prior year; other established technology companies such as Samsung and Motorola offered smartwatches; U.S.-based fitness tracker Fitbit had recently launched its first smartwatch; and Chinese firm, Xiaomi, was soon to release a low-priced smartwatch. Migicovsky considers an array of strategic options as he looks ahead.

The case explores Hadi Partovi's mission to provide every K-12 student in the United States the opportunity to learn computer science. Students can assess how Partovi transformed his passion into an organization that reached millions around the globe through the launch of not-for-profit, Code.org, and its well-known awareness building event entitled "The Hour of Code." The case provides students the opportunity to consider the organization's multi-faceted approach, its team, and partnerships strategy. A particular focus is on the path taken by this relatively young social enterprise to address issues of scalability and sustainability.

This case features Wealthfront, a Palo Alto California-based financial technology startup. Wealthfront created a fully-automated, low-cost online investment platform targeting the millennial generation. The founders positioned Wealthfront as a disruptive force within the asset management industry. By dramatically lowering the minimum investment required, they sought to democratize access to sophisticated investing. By the fall of 2014, the firm's assets under management (AUM) had surpassed $1.5 billion. CEO Adam Nash contemplates a variety of strategic questions including whether Wealthfront should maintain its focus on the consumer channel or expand into business to business channels in order to increase AUM.

This case features San Francisco-based financial technology startup, LOYAL3. Founded in 2008, the company seeks to disrupt the capital markets and democratize access to those markets for retail investors. By the fall of 2014, LOYAL3 had three products. In the first, the Social IPO Platformâ„¢, LOYAL3 acted as co-manager of an issuing company's initial public offering (IPO), enabling individual investors to purchase IPO shares at the same price-and the same time-as institutional investors. The second product, the Social Stock Planâ„¢, allowed investors to purchase stock in publicly traded companies they liked. The third product, Stock Rewardsâ„¢, enabled companies to grant free stock to customers in lieu of promotional discounts or in recognition of brand loyalty. LOYAL3 CEO Barry Schneider viewed 2014 as a watershed year. The company had participated in 10 initial public offerings to date. In the case he contemplates the product roadmap going forward.

In December 2013 a group of angry protesters blocked one of the commuter bus provided by the large Silicon Valley firms (known as "Google buses") which was stopped in San Francisco on its way to the company's headquarters 40 miles south. The protests were a tangible manifestation of the sharp increase in tensions between citizens upset with changes they saw in San Francisco and the "techies" and technology companies they held responsible for the disappearing middle class, increased homelessness, languishing public education, and a sense of departure from the unique culture and values of the city's past. This case explores some of the substantial economic inequality problems facing San Francisco, and how much responsibility for creating or exacerbating the problems rests with the government, technology firms, their employees, and the nature of capitalism, among others. It also allows for discussion of what technology firms and the "techies" might do to help alleviate the problem.