個案總覽

As they prepare to graduate from Harvard Business School, the co-founders of greeting card company startup Lovepop need capital to cover the company's operating costs and must choose between two seed financing offers. One offer is from an angel group and the other from a startup accelerator. Having bootstrapped the company's operations since its founding a year and a half earlier, the founders must weigh the differences in valuation and pros and cons of the accelerator program to determine which option is appropriate for Lovepop at this stage. In addition to addressing the challenges of early-stage fundraising, the case details the terms, offerings, and operations of startup accelerators.

Chai Point is India's largest organized chai retailer. It has missed its target for retail store openings by approximately 25%, goals that are very important to its investors who are also their board members. However, it has developed an exciting new Internet based tea dispenser, that has the potential to dramatically increase Chai Point's market opportunity and growth rate but can be seen as a change in their growth strategy. The founder needs to decide his strategy for his next board meeting. Should he focus on their past performance? Or should he spend time outlining boxC.in's technology and potential, since this will be the first time that the institutional investors will be seeing this new capability?

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 November 2015, Square, Inc. launched its initial public offering (IPO). The IPO had an offering price of $9 per share, lower than the $11 to $13 estimate that had been outlined in the preliminary prospectus and 42% below the $15.50 share price in its most recent financing less than a year before. The lower than anticipated pricing of Square's IPO, and the implied valuation, had left investors and market observers wondering if this was an indication of a valuation bubble, or a shift in the market. The case provides an overview of the IPO process, and examines U.S. IPO trends from the 1980s to mid-2010s. It explores the rationales behind an increasing number of $billion + private valuations, known as 'unicorns', and explores who the winners and losers are when such firms go public at lower valuations.

Based in Portola Valley, California, WTI specialized in this hybrid form of debt and equity financing for early-stage companies. Like traditional venture capital and private equity firms, WTI raised funds from institutional investors and evaluated deals. However, instead of making initial investments in the form of equity, WTI focused primarily on lending money to start-ups, charging them interest and receiving warrants that could later be converted to stock in the case of a liquidity event. Most initial investments-usually in the range of $3-$5 million-were made in tandem with or following a company's early rounds of venture capital equity financing. In addition, like more traditional venture capital investors, WTI hoped to participate in follow-on debt and equity investments in its successful portfolio companies.

The creators of the start-up AndFound, an online platform that connects angel investors with a curated selection of promising start-ups, have a towering advantage over similar business accelerators: The site is free. But this central tenet of the company's mission presents problems as the company looks ahead and considers options for a long-range business model to monetize its services. Expert commentary comes from Kevin Laws, COO of AngelList, a website that connects entrepreneurs with angel investors, and Jennifer Lum, an angel investor, entrepreneur, and adviser to start-ups at MIT, Techstars, and 500 Startups.

The creators of the start-up AndFound, an online platform that connects angel investors with a curated selection of promising start-ups, have a towering advantage over similar business accelerators: The site is free. But this central tenet of the company's mission presents problems as the company looks ahead and considers options for a long-range business model to monetize its services. Expert commentary comes from Kevin Laws, COO of AngelList, a website that connects entrepreneurs with angel investors, and Jennifer Lum, an angel investor, entrepreneur, and adviser to start-ups at MIT, Techstars, and 500 Startups.

Setting equitable and "market" level compensation for founders and early employees of startups is one of the most important elements of a new venture. It is not only central to attract and retain the best human capital for the startup, but is critical to align incentives between investors and management. This note provides a framework to think about compensation in startup ventures and is intended for entrepreneurs thinking about starting a venture, as well as for employees looking to join a young high-potential startup.

Branded as the "Millennial firm for Millennials," Mike Rothenberg founded Rothenberg Ventures (RV) in 2012 while earning his MBA at the Harvard Business School (HBS). Over the following twenty-four months, Rothenberg raised $20 million and built a venture capital firm that made dozens of seed investments in technology-focused startups. Pitched as an event that could pack a year's worth of networking into a single day, Founder Field Day was perhaps the firm's largest bet to date. On a spring day in May of 2014, as some 300 invited founders descended on AT&T Park in San Francisco, one attendee, Fran Hauser, had a much larger decision to make than just selecting which sessions to attend in the day's 7th and 8th "innings." Rothenberg had recently asked Hauser to join RV as a partner and investor, and invited her out to the Bay Area to consider the offer. Hauser, who had left her role as the President of Digital for Time Inc.'s Style & Entertainment Group three months earlier, wondered if Rothenberg's inexperience would prove to be a drawback or a strength.

Oasys Water had developed a proprietary water treatment technology based on an innovative forward osmosis process that could remove dissolved solids from water more effectively and efficiently than existing technologies. As Oasys looked to scale, it was exploring partnerships with various incumbent firms-the most serious were with a set of international oil and gas production companies (IOCs); a global oil and gas (O&G) services provider called National Oilwell Varco (NOV); and Woteer, a Chinese EPC company specializing in industrial water and wastewater systems. Woteer had expressed an interest in gaining exclusive access to Oasys' forward osmosis technology for water treatment applications in China in exchange for an equity investment. Jim Matheson, President and CEO, did not have the luxury of choosing a partner solely on the merits of its strategic value to Oasys. He was forced to evaluate the strategic benefit alongside the likelihood of actually closing a deal, the specific terms of each deal, and especially the speed with which a deal could be closed, given Oasys' pressing financing needs. Should he do a deal with Woteer, and if so, on what terms?

John Davidson, a partner at Ware Street Capital (WSC) and a board member at Fast Ion Battery, had just received a phone call from Don Lerner at Bluelock Ventures telling him that Bluelock would not participate in the $ 5 bridge financing for Fast Ion Battery. Lerner's call could not have come at a worse time. Fast Ion was running out of cash and needed another round of financing urgently to continue developing its revolutionary battery. Davidson faced a real dilemma. On the one hand, the company was finally gaining traction with developing its technology and the search to replace the current CEO had yielded two prospective candidates who were extremely well-suited to drive the company forward with a more capital efficient business model. On the other hand, Ware Street Capital and the two other investors had already invested $10 million into a company that had not performed up to investors' expectations. Would they be throwing more good money after bad by providing the bridge financing? Moreover, would other, later stage, investors be willing to provide the significant amounts of capital required to get the company to an exit event given the changing climate for clean tech investments? These questions became more pressing following Lerner's call that Bluelock had chosen not to continue backing Fast Ion. Was Fast Ion Battery worth saving?