The corporate venture capital (CVC) primer follows the journey of Claudia Fan Munce, the head of CVC for a major software and hardware conglomerate, as she and her team source and diligence partnership opportunities with startups in the healthcare industry. Along the way, students learn about the history of CVC, the relationship between CVCs and traditional venture capital, and underlying motivations behind many CVC deals.

The Birch Benders case follows the story of Matt LaCasse and Lizzie Ackerman as they embark on a journey to make the world's best pancake mix. Through their trials and tribulations, the readers learn of the nuances involved in crafting an immaculate pancake recipe and then developing a business around it through effective branding, packaging, and distribution strategies. They realize that to scale the company successfully, they must retool their sales strategy. The case details LaCasse and Ackerman's search for a new VP of Sales, as well as a discussion on what the ideal candidate might look like.

The Medium Corporation seeks to change how people author, consume and engage with content on the Internet. Founded by Ev Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter, the company developed a digital publishing platform and set of social network tools that allow people to spend substantive time with weighty issues facing society, business and politics. Fighting the trend of quick engagement with short-form content on the Internet, Medium wrestles with how to deliver an experience that advances important topics with ease, flexibility, and meaning, while working to build a large and successful company. The challenges of building a successful digital media company, balancing tool development with content curation, and developing a successful monetization model are the core topics facing the firm's leadership team.

Lending Club follows the path of founder and CEO Renaud Laplanche as he scales his successful P2P lending company both pre- and post-IPO. From debating with bankers on the proper valuation metrics for the company, to managing customer acquisition costs as the competitive landscape rapidly changes, the Lending Club case explores several key challenges that come with operating a fin-tech company at scale.

This case study delves into the complexities of equity allocation among startup cofounders, exploring three distinct scenarios: DogBone/Whiplash, Kitten Mittens, and Bad Blood. Each vignette presents unique challenges and decisions faced by cofounders during the critical stages of a startup's lifecycle. The DogBone/Whiplash story starts with an equal equity split among four founders and evolves through pivotal moments, including a cofounder's exit, role adjustments, and a significant pivot in business direction. It highlights the dilemmas in reassessing equity distribution in light of changing roles and contributions. Kitten Mittens focuses on the dynamics between founders and investors, and the intricacies of negotiating equity splits when new members join the team. It underscores the importance of clear communication and understanding of roles in the investor-founder relationship. Bad Blood examines the relationship between two cofounders with differing visions and skills, emphasizing the challenges in balancing equity split with operational roles and contribution levels. This case ultimately encourages a nuanced understanding of equity distribution, considering factors such as founder experience, role differentiation, and the evolving nature of startups. It serves as a practical guide for new entrepreneurs, providing insights into navigating the often complex and emotionally charged process of equity allocation in startups.

Atlassian: Sales examines the company's unique, no-touch sales model for enterprise products that help teams track projects, collaborate, and build products. The case explores how the company developed and sold its first product, JIRA, and how early lessons helped shape the company's no-touch sales model for all subsequent products. It then discusses the organizational effects of a low-price, volume-based model, and how the advocacy team and channel partners serve as keys to success for the approach.

The LiveRamp case follows the story of Anneka Gupta, Chief Product Officer of LiveRamp, from her early days with the company as a spinoff from Rapleaf, to the present day, where she manages a large product management team responsible for developing cutting edge data onboarding products.

Supplement to case E622A. The LiveRamp case follows the story of Anneka Gupta, Chief Product Officer of LiveRamp, from her early days with the company as a spinoff from Rapleaf, to the present day, where she manages a large product management team responsible for developing cutting edge data onboarding products.

Alchemist Accelerator follows the story of Ravi Belani, founder and Managing Director of Alchemist Accelerator, as he leads one of the leading enterprise-focused accelerators in Silicon Valley. The case discusses the origins of the program, as well as the many challenges faced by Belani and his team as they seek out potential methods of scaling the program. The management team debate difficult choices, such as how to preserve the quality of the Alchemist program while also reacting to rapidly changing market dynamics. This case prepares students who are interested in learning more about venture capital, enterprise startups, and enterprise-focused accelerators.

Noam Angrist cofounded Young 1ove with the promise of connecting young Africans to proven life-saving information. By massively scaling sexual health information campaigns that were previously shown in randomized trials to have significant impact, he hoped Young 1ove would be able to reach 1 million youth in Africa by 2017. However, while he and his team were less than a year into the project, they were already dealing with anfractuous government processes, strained by limited resources, and unsure of how their operations would succeed at scale. There were also important decisions ahead: Which delivery model would most efficiently and effectively scale the Young 1ove educational campaign? When and how- if at all-should they rigorously test an intervention that they had reason to believe was already working? Though convinced wholeheartedly in the importance of the Young 1ove mission and excited by its early progress, Angrist pondered these important decisions and how their resolution would figure in the organization's path forward.

Walker & Company follows Tristan Walker, the GSB alumnus and Silicon Valley entrepreneur, as he searches for an idea around which to start a business. After a period of sifting through ideas and performing diligence on opportunities ranging from hair weaves for African American women to starting a bank, Walker found his calling-starting a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company for people of color. But this is where his journey only begins. From here, the case follows Walker as he leads the company through a series of growth stages, including setting up his board of directors and making key executive hires.

Lending Club follows the path of founder and CEO Renaud Laplanche as he scales his successful P2P lending company both pre- and post-IPO. From debating with bankers on the proper valuation metrics for the company, to managing customer acquisition costs as the competitive landscape rapidly changes, the Lending Club case explores several key challenges that come with operating a fin-tech company at scale.

The SAP Design Thinking case follows the path of Sam Yen, Chief Design Officer at SAP, on his quest to infuse design thinking into the SAP organization. Through a series of programs and events, Yen discovered that while employees of the multinational conglomerate expressed interest in leveraging design thinking in their work, they never seemed to follow through with it. Yen and his design team experimented with a plethora of tactics-ranging from grassroots campaigns meant to engage the employee base, to top-down approaches intended to excite the company's executives, with the hopes that this enthusiasm would trickle down throughout the rest of the organization. On a trail rife with challenges, Yen and his team struggled to continuously develop new approaches until suddenly the metaphorical storm cleared, and he could clearly see a path to scale design thinking throughout SAP.

Supplement to case SM250B. The SAP Design Thinking case follows the path of Sam Yen, Chief Design Officer at SAP, on his quest to infuse design thinking into the SAP organization. Through a series of programs and events, Yen discovered that while employees of the multinational conglomerate expressed interest in leveraging design thinking in their work, they never seemed to follow through with it. Yen and his design team experimented with a plethora of tactics-ranging from grassroots campaigns meant to engage the employee base, to top-down approaches intended to excite the company's executives, with the hopes that this enthusiasm would trickle down throughout the rest of the organization. On a trail rife with challenges, Yen and his team struggled to continuously develop new approaches until suddenly the metaphorical storm cleared, and he could clearly see a path to scale design thinking throughout SAP.

This case explores the rise and fall of Nebula Inc., a company that industry experts had originally predicted would become the market leader in the hybrid cloud computing market. In its early days, Nebula seemed like a guaranteed success-the founding team included Chris Kemp, who helped start OpenStack (an open source cloud computing project) during his time at NASA. Top-tier angel and VC investors, including Ted Schlein (Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers), Andy Bechtolsheim, and Ram Shriram, backed the company from its onset, and the private cloud computing space appeared to be a hot early-stage market. Nebula launched the first version of its product in the spring of 2013 to great fanfare. Pent-up excitement about the underlying technology contributed to approximately $1 million in first quarter revenue. Management was thrilled and thought they were the ones who had finally cracked the hybrid cloud market. However, sales soon began to slow, and many chose to go with competing and older solutions they understood. Through the eyes of Chris Kemp and Gordon Stitt, this case examines how such a hot company, led by founders with impressive backgrounds and supported by some of the most noteworthy investors in Silicon Valley, got lost on its path to success.