Across the globe, inspiring startup founders are creating a meaningful impact on people's lives and generating economic growth through new applications of deep technology. This category, often called "deep tech" for short, includes ventures whose key innovative solution is grounded in potentially game-changing advancements in science and technology-like those leveraging the latest in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), cybersecurity, biotechnology, and so on. Because of its ability to catalyze significant changes across industries, deep tech has sometimes been called the "fourth wave of innovation," following on the heels of the industrial revolution, the information revolution, and the digital revolution. And deep tech startups can have a major impact on the world, as their founders spend their days leveraging "tangible scientific discoveries and engineering innovations" in the pursuit of "solv[ing] big issues that really affect the world around them." This case shares the stories of three such founders-born, raised, and working in India, Mexico, and Turkey. Two of the founders launched their own product/service startups, leveraging emerging innovations in AI, cloud computing, computer vision, and biotechnology to address major challenges and opportunities in the medical device and mental health spaces. And the third founder established her own investing startup-a VC fund centered on deep tech ventures, bridging the insights and networks of Silicon Valley with the talent and energy in her region. Through each of their stories, similar themes emerge: capitalizing on the newfound accessibility of deep technologies to solve major problems locally, growing their startups with the ambition to expand beyond their regions, helping establish their regions' entrepreneurial ecosystem for future generations, and helping talented people all over the world reach their potential.

This case follows Shan Kadavil, the co-founder and CEO of FreshToHome, as he assesses the growing diversity of investments being made by his team. FreshToHome is a technology-enabled platform that connects fishermen directly with customers, eliminating intermediaries and guaranteeing product quality and traceability. To achieve their mission, the company has invested heavily in advanced technology and operations to optimize the supply chain, reduce waste, and offer competitive prices. This case highlights the balancing act required by Kadavil as he aims to maintain the company's core mission while fostering growth and adapting to an ever-evolving competitive landscape (including both online players and traditional offline retailers and local vendors) FreshToHome must also navigate logistical issues and cultural differences when expanding geographically into new markets.

Nova Pioneer was a private school system in South Africa and Kenya that offered preschool through secondary education for students ranging in age from 3 to 19. The earliest of Nova Pioneer's precursors was Pioneer Academies, founded in South Africa by Chinezi Chijioke in 2013. Pioneer was started to offer the affordable, quality education needed to develop Africa's next generation of leaders and innovators. In 2015, Pioneer Academies merged with Nova Academies, a newer school in Kenya founded by a team of experienced education entrepreneurs, creating Nova Pioneer. This case covers the next set of expansion plans for Nova Pioneer - to expand into additional countries and fulfill Nova Pioneer's vision of becoming a pan-African school system.

The purpose of this case is to look at Zipline's product market fit. The case examines how the Zipline team evaluated which market segments to consider next as they looked to expand beyond Ghana and Rwanda. Students will also be introduced to various go to market strategies that were used to address this target market. Students will also gain an understanding of the challenges a company faces to ensure product market fit.

Nico Shea founded Cumplo in 2011 to enable peer-to-peer lending for consumers before changing the company's focus to small-to-medium businesses (SMBs). Cumplo was a financial technology ("fintech") company that provided a platform for SMBs applying for a loan to be matched with investors willing to fund that loan. The platform further differentiated itself among SMBs by allowing companies to use unpaid invoices as collateral. Despite significant issues in the beginning with regulators, Cumplo operations in Chile grew to become one of Latin America's largest business crowdlending platform. Cumplo facilitated its first loan in Mexico in February of 2018, a month before the local government passed a new law regulating fintech companies. This enabled the team to work closely with regulators to create rules that would prevent bad players from damaging the industry and not be surprised by the rules that were enacted. While the team also faced challenges in establishing Cumplo's Mexican operations, after months of work they built a high-performing and motivated team. Having proven the Cumplo business model to be successful in both Chile and Mexico, Shea was anxious to begin more rapid expansion. Now that Cumplo had been successfully established itself in the largest Spanish-speaking market, Shea considered expanding to the second largest market of Spanish-speakers, the United States.

As developing economies grow and become more connected, new and exciting entrepreneurial opportunities arise across markets and industries. Smartphones, the best sensors on earth have already been deployed and new technologies, such as Machine Learning, Robotics and Blockchain, will allow problems to be solved at a scale like never seen before. Despite this fertile ground for new endeavors, success not only requires a unique technology fit but great execution in adverse environments. This case includes three vignettes featuring Latin American robo-advsing platform, Alkanza, Indian AI-enabled medical device startup, Sigtuple and emerging Turkish Venture Capital firm, ScaleX. It describes the unique opportunities and distinct challenges of applying deep technologies in developing economies through the eyes of three groups of entrepreneurs scaling technology-based endeavors.

Entrepreneurs looking to launch start-ups in developing economies must confront numerous challenges that their peers in more developed countries may be less likely to encounter. Depending on the country in which they are operating, entrepreneurs in developing economies oftentimes lack access to human capital and professional services, sufficient sources of funding, large markets for their products, adequate infrastructure, and predictable legal and regulatory processes, among myriad other challenges. This note aims to explore these challenges in more depth-while simultaneously examining some representative countries and regions in which entrepreneurship is thriving. The note also serves as a complement (and informal update) to the 2013 World Economic Forum Report: "Entrepreneurial Ecosystems around the Globe and Company Growth Dynamics." This note is intended primarily for current or budding entrepreneurs interested in starting a new venture in a developing economy, as well as investors seeking to fund start-ups in these countries. The note is also relevant for policy makers looking to encourage entrepreneurship in their cities or countries, universities wanting to support entrepreneurship, and corporations seeking a better understanding of their role in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of a developing economy.

Entrepreneurs looking to launch start-ups in developing economies must confront numerous challenges that their peers in more developed countries may be less likely to encounter. Depending on the country in which they are operating, entrepreneurs in developing economies oftentimes lack access to human capital and professional services, sufficient sources of funding, large markets for their products, adequate infrastructure, and predictable legal and regulatory processes, among myriad other challenges. This note aims to explore these challenges in more depth-while simultaneously examining some representative countries and regions in which entrepreneurship is thriving. The note also serves as a complement (and informal update) to the 2013 World Economic Forum Report: "Entrepreneurial Ecosystems around the Globe and Company Growth Dynamics," as well as an update to our 2016 Teaching Note to include recent developments in select Asian, African, and Latin American entrepreneurial ecosystems. This note is intended primarily for current or budding entrepreneurs interested in starting a new venture in a developing economy, as well as investors seeking to fund start-ups in these countries. The note is also relevant for policy makers looking to encourage entrepreneurship in their cities or countries, universities wanting to support entrepreneurship, and corporations seeking a better understanding of their role in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of a developing economy.

The Pioneer Academies case looks at the founding and growing of a South African campus of private schools that offered preschool through secondary, and walks through the different considerations as the founder considers potential merger opportunities.

At the end of 2011, Fernando Lelo de Larrea (MBA 2004) and Federico Antoni (MBA 2004) decided to resign from their CEO positions in their respective mid-sized companies and start fundraising for their first early stage investment fund: Seed Innovation Trust 1. Given their lack of track record in venture capital, they decided to create a micro fund, the smallest, yet most institutional, venture capital fund possible consistent with their investment thesis. Founded in 2012, ALLVP raised the first institutional seed capital fund in Mexico to invest in innovative service-oriented, new companies. The investment thesis focused on service industries such as healthcare, financial services, and consumer internet that were experiencing high growth due to demographic and macro-economic trends, favorable non-market forces, the growing middle class and the availability of new technologies. Given the underdeveloped entrepreneurial ecosystem in Mexico, the founders established, along with the fund management vehicles, a Seed Accelerator Program, called Venture Institute that would feed the fund with high quality startups. This dual model proved key to creating a high value first portfolio and positioning ALLVP in the Mexican entrepreneurial ecosystem. Two years and twelve portfolio companies later, ALLVP raised a second, $40 million dollar (USD) fund focused on Series A and B rounds in Latin America. Given ALLVP's success, a new proactive public policy from Mexico's new government was launched and helped the seed capital industry grow from ALLVP as the first and only institutional fund in 2012 to more than a dozen funds in 2014.

Entrepreneurs seeking to start companies in developing economies face significant human resource challenges. Before embarking on their ventures, entrepreneurs should articulate a talent management strategy that describes how they will source, identify, screen, and manage employees, including rank and file workers, mid-level managers, and senior executives as the company scales. In developing such a strategy, the most important considerations will include how much and what kinds of human capital are present, the availability of tools to effectively identify and screen candidates, local culture, and the flexibility of the labor market. Drawing from interviews with entrepreneurs and investors across a number of countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, this note explores several major human resource challenges found in developing economies and the strategies entrepreneurs have employed to meet these challenges.

As of the date of this note, financing environments varied significantly across developing economies. Differences in legal structures, operating conditions, and available capital sources created a myriad of conditions for entrepreneurs to navigate when seeking funds to develop their ventures. One systemic trend, however, did exist: entrepreneurs consistently cited access to financing as one of the top three obstacles to achieving growth. This note does not seek to provide a "one size fits all" model to addressing this challenge. Rather, this note is intended to provide entrepreneurs with a starting point to better understand the types of financing available in developing economies, the sources of this capital, and the means to locate these investors. Entrepreneurs can use the examples in this note as a springboard to craft solutions for the challenges posed by their specific financing environments.