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This case focused on rapid prototyping in a startup company. Two students, Isaac Lewis and Nathaniel Herring, both suffered should injuries and had difficulty finding the right equipment for their rehab stints. As part of the Master's in Entrepreneurial Leadership degree program at Babson College, the two went into an extensive discovery and prototyping process to create a product to assist in that rehab. The case describes their process and ends with them having to make a launch decision.

The Auction Mobility case covers the founding of, and raising capital for, a new venture in the app industry. Doug Brenhouse and Jeremy Paradise (founders) launch a business to bring auctions to cell phones. Initially, they conceived of a peer-to-peer platform (meaning users would put items up for auctions, targeting other users), but eventually found that an enterprise solution to existing auction houses was a better opportunity. As the company evolves, it goes through multiple rounds of fundraising. As the case closes, Auction Mobility is considering whether to sell the company or keep growing it with a IPO as a future goal.

In 2007, Braeden Ruud was a sophomore in high school when the United States faced one of its worst pet food contaminations in history. In an effort to protect the family pets, his mom, Mary Ann, began preparing home-cooked pet food using ingredients sourced from the family ranch. It wasn't long after that family and friends began requesting this farm-to-table pet food for their own pets. Braeden entered the Master in Science in Entrepreneurial Leadership program at Babson College in 2015 with the goal of graduating with a full-fledged business. He founded Raised Right, a human-grade pet food company. Over the course of five years, Braeden worked on building Raised Right, launching its first product in 2018, and scaling to over 750 retail locations as of February 2020. With so much success, Braeden was soon challenged with sustaining growth and building Raised Right's market presence in a highly competitive environment.

Esporte Interativo (EI) successfully launched and competed in the Brazilian sports television market for over 12 years. EI basically created the category (e.g., ESPN of Brazil) and came to prominence by televising the Champions League for European soccer, the National Basketball Association (NBA), and other sports content property. Since its founding, other television entities have recognized the potential for sports broadcasting which has dramatically driven up the cost of securing sports content. Edgar Diniz and Leo Lenz Cesar, co-founders and the CEO and CFO of EI, were pondering how to continue to compete and grow in an increasingly competitive space. The main decision point was whether to accept an offer from Turner Broadcasting Corporation to acquire EI.

He was drawn to a subgroup in the AmeriCorps program which most of his fellow counselors avoided and warned him away from, young MS-13 gang members who were considered too dangerous and unwilling to change. After earning their trust by teaching them soccer skills, Jon developed a relationship with this group, shattering his preconceptions of their motivations and needs. Jon began to develop a plan to devote his life's work to bringing hope and opportunity to the group of young inner-city men identified as most likely to kill or be killed. He began his prototype operation in Boston. The vehicle was a free gym in the inner city where "student trainees" could begin to develop formal weightlifting training skills as a means to a new livelihood, experience a more positive community of mentors and peers, and through paid weight-training sessions for clients (typically white and wealthy), form a bridge between two very different socioeconomic groups. Publicity, notably through an ESPN video feature in 2012, created national and international awareness and demand for ICW gyms in different cities. Jon wanted to satisfy this demand, but he understood that his high-touch, locally focused, carefully managed program could not be exported quickly or formulaically without significant risk of failure and reputation damage. At the time of the case, Jon had carefully added a second, successful gym whose location straddled prosperous and dangerous neighborhoods in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had also launched a corporate training program and begun to build out his organization and fundraising to support growth. Seven years after founding ICW, Jon is now ready to contemplate expansion to his first new city, Philadelphia.

A college entrepreneur named Emily Levy founded MightyWellâ„¢ when she faced a personal challenge following her diagnosis with chronic, or more properly called, Post-treatment Lyme disease. Emily identified the need for an improved fabric cover to protect and fashionably hide a Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter (PICC) line that was inserted in her arm to deliver antibiotics to her heart. Over the course of two years, while completing her undergraduate degree, Emily designed, developed, manufactured, and sold her product while bootstrapping[1] her venture. She competed in 17 business competitions and won prizes in 15, before being awarded $250,000 as the 2016 winner of the Babson Breakaway Challenge. Emily is now rebranding and pursuing a product expansion initiative to transform her company from a single product to a brand of wellness wear[2] and products attractive to a larger base of medical patients.

The Balanced Snacking case follows the entrepreneurial journeys of Gautam Gupta and Ken Chen. Gupta and Chen met as Babson undergraduates. The goal of the Balanced Snacking project is to deliver healthy (balanced) snacks to consumers on a subscription basis through an online marketplace. At the time of the case, Gupta and Chen had developed the idea to the point of conducting marketplace experiments to determine demand. They had come from very different backgrounds, but their combined skills complemented each other as they progressed through this trial and error stage. The case focuses on what types of experiments and testing they might pursue to prove their business idea.

Crowdfunding is considered an alternative to traditional angel and venture capital funding that has helped get many business ventures off the ground. The basic idea of crowdfunding centers on pitching a business idea to a large group of people and seeking financial support. Although crowdfunding has existed for hundreds of years, it has recently gone to online platforms. The most successful platforms to date have been Kickstarter and Indiegogo, which have helped many ventures raise initial funding. This case is concerned with two different startups, one started by a twin sister duo (Marla and Annie) and the other by a Babson College student (Hanson). Enerchi Bites is a startup featuring a new food product that was developed out of a passion for fitness and yoga. Identical twin sisters (Marla and Annie Feldman) started experimenting with different combinations of foods with a chia-seed base. Once they had developed three different flavors, they began distributing their products at various yoga conventions. They quickly built some buzz about their new products and were faced with the problem of scaling their new venture. They decided to try a Kickstarter campaign where they would attempt to raise $10,000. They figured this was the amount they needed to help scale up their operations. After the completion of the Kickstarter campaign, the sisters found the final results disappointing as they netted only about $5,000 after expenses from advertising and the rewards that were due to the campaign backers. Think Board is the creation of a Babson student, Hanson Grant. This business venture was born out of one of Hanson's earlier ideas. He had created white board t-shirts. He found that the t-shirt idea was not going to work and was thinking through how to use this to his advantage until his friends connected the dots for him. If he put pieces of the material together, he ended up with an oversized dry-erase board that could be printed to feature any pattern.

Shane Eten is passionate about being an entrepreneur and finds an opportunity in managing food waste; a Clean Technology startup. Shane develops a plan for an anaerobic digester that will convert grocery store food waste into energy and organic fertilizer. The case explores Shane's entrepreneurial journey, from working in a high tech startup, a low tech candle maker, an MBA student to gaining recognition in business plan competitions for the anaerobic digester. At the point in time of the case, Shane needs to raise some capital to develop a prototype and prove his concept. Shane struggles in identifying sources for the $250,000 he needs to launch his dream. Although Shane has garnered lots of interest from potential investors during his success in business plan competitions, his venture is too early and the capital needed is too small for venture capitalists. He could seek angel capital, but how can he identify these "hidden" angels? Friends and family are a possibility, but Shane isn't sure that his contacts have enough capital available for him. Besides, he would like to preserve as much ownership as possible at this point in time, because he recognizes that he'll need to raise more capital to build out the company if the prototype is successful. This is a good case to explore alternative sources of capital.

Bladelogic, a high flier in the large and growing market of data center automation software, had reached a critical juncture. The company, which had already garnered two rounds of venture funding and closed deals with dozens of blue-chip firms, appeared to be headed in the right direction. Revenues, however, were becoming increasingly hard to forecast. As the CEO, Dev Ittycheria's leadership position was entirely based on his ability to execute in a tough, high-stakes environment. Monthly board meetings were becoming increasingly tense; Bladelogic was becoming vulnerable to missing its revenue forecasts unless one or two "big" deals came through at the end of each quarter. With less than twelve months of cash left at the firm's current burn rate, Dev knew that they were going to need another round of capital well ahead of schedule. Current investors were in no mood to put more money in at a higher valuation, so the company was facing the very real prospect of a down round . Dev knew they had to get additional capital fast...but how could he secure a new financing round without the participation of existing investors? At what price would the current investors participate?