This case study examines the founding of Vitana, a dentistry-focused search fund founded by Ashish Bagai, Monika Srivastava, and Amir Fardshi. In this case, students are encouraged to explore the advantages and disadvantages of being solo founders versus having founding partners. The case also delves into the frameworks used to identify attributes, skills and criteria for evaluating prospective co-founders. Additionally, the case examines the potential risks of starting a new venture with friends and family, and strategies for mitigating those risks. Furthermore, students are encouraged to explore the complexities and issues of governance that may arise in a three-person founding team.

Bevi was founded to enable a permanent transition away from single-use bottles and cans in order to make an environmental impact. The company built and sold thousands of IoT-enabled smart water dispensers that offered filtered, sparkling and flavored water on tap. Bevi's machines have helped save over 150 million bottles and cans from ending up in landfills. This case explores Bevi's product roadmap, market structures that impacted the company's growth and the complexity of pursuing a dual distribution model in the beverage industry. The case also highlights issues of leadership management and retention in high-growth startups, as well as the strategic decisions the company faced along the way.

The leadership team of Roblox was contemplating a public offering in December 2020. Roblox was an online video game platform that offered developers a platform for building new games and a global social network for publishing and hosting online games. Roblox had filed its S-1 prospectus with the SEC, and registered to go public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with the ticker symbol "RBLX." However, at the last minute, a series of market events occurred that made other public listing channels potentially more attractive. Guthrie and the Roblox team must decide whether to delay the IPO, pull the IPO prospectus altogether or list shares through alternative routes such as a direct listing or a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). The Roblox case chronicles the firm's evolution from launch to IPO, highlighting the various funding rounds and market events that impacted the company's public offering in 2020. The case details the process the Roblox team followed to decide between a traditional IPO, a direct listing or a SPAC. Students are encouraged to explore the advantages and disadvantages of different channels for going public, who the stakeholders are in the decision, and the importance of market timing.

The SoftBank Vision Fund case examines the history and evolution of late-stage venture investing and explores SoftBank's evolving investment strategy. SoftBank Investment Advisers, the investing arm of SoftBank group, manages two of the world's largest venture capital funds - SoftBank Vision Funds 1 and 2. The SoftBank Vision Fund case follows Lydia Jett, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, as she describes the firm's pre-investment due diligence process and post-investment support to help address issues and accelerate growth. The case also explores the impact that large venture capital funds and non-traditional venture investors have had on deal size, speed of transaction and competition in venture capital investing.

Mar Hershenson and Pejman Nozad founded Pear VC in 2014 to invest in early-stage start-ups in Pre-Seed and Seed funding rounds. Over the years, Pear developed numerous cohort-based programs to work with founders and build new ventures such as Pear Garage, Pear Competition, and Pear Fellows. The case examines the history and evolution of the early-stage venture capital industry over the last two decades. The case also explores the challenges associated with managing and scaling early-stage venture capital firms. Hershenson and Nozad provide insight into different aspects of early stage venture capitalists' jobs: deal sourcing, pre-investment due diligence, work to support portfolio companies, and managing the venture capital fund as a business.

Honor Home Care, founded as an on-demand home care company, evolved into the leading home care technology and operations platforms for home care agencies across the U.S. In the last quarter of 2020, the Honor leadership team raised $140 million in Series D funding to accelerate the company's geographic expansion. Seth Sternberg, CEO of Honor Home Care, must decide between two options- acquiring one large home care franchise or buying several smaller home care agencies. In this case, students are encouraged to explore the advantages and disadvantages of different partnership and acquisition opportunities to scale technology companies in the home care market. The case highlights the complexity of customer acquisition and employee recruiting, management and retention in the industry, and lays out how Honor sought to tackle these challenges, as well as the strategic decisions they faced along the way. The case also chronicles the evolution of the home care industry in the United States, highlighting the market structures that impacted the company's growth.

Abbey Wemimo and Samir Goel founded Esusu in 2018 to help low-to-moderate-income renters build credit history. Esusu, a for-profit impact focused venture, collected rental payments from property managers and reported this data to major credit bureaus, which helped renters improve their credit scores. In April 2020, only six months after closing their first institutional round of capital, New York state issued a lockdown to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this period, the Esusu leadership team addressed numerous priorities-transitioning their team to operate online, managing employee health concerns, calling clients and investors while still running the company's day-to-day operations. Ultimately, Wemimo and Goel must decide whether to cut costs in order to keep Esusu's existing business afloat or build new products and leverage new partnerships to serve renters and property managers during a time of crisis. In this case, students are encouraged to examine the history and evolution of the credit-scoring models used in the U.S. The case also explores the impact that a lack of credit records may have on American families in particular among minority groups. The case chronicles how Esusu sought to tackle these challenges in a time of crisis, as well as the strategic decisions they faced along the way.