This case provides an overview of the venture debt industry with a focus on WTI, a leading venture debt provider. The case follows Maurice Werdegar, the Chairman of WTI, as he considers offering a new loan and amending an existing loan.
In this case study, students will explore some of the differences and considerations that may emerge when entrepreneurs evaluate and choose between multiple financing offers from venture capital investors. The case follows the two founders of a fictional company, All Hands, as they raise a Series A financing round. The founders have received term sheets from two venture capital firms that differ not only in the valuation of the firm's equity but also in other important financial and non-financial ways, including preference structures, dividends, anti-dilution protection and governance. Students will put themselves in the position of the founders to identify differences across the two term sheets, evaluate potential economic and governance tradeoffs, and develop a point-of-view on which offer they would accept.
This case explores the introduction of a new product that targets both new and existing segments of the investment management services market. Cinnamon, a discretionary investment management app, was founded in the United Kingdom in 2011. With the help of the team's first product manager, Maria Pasquale (GSB '11), Cinnamon navigated the new product introduction process: identifying unmet needs, developing value hypotheses, building a minimum viable product, creating a marketing and launch plan, and setting up a customer feedback loop. The team then clarified their target customer and refined the product in pursuit of product-market fit. Throughout the process, Pasquale established Cinnamon's product management function, including the organizational structure, processes, and mindsets that fostered effective product development.
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.
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.
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.
Lex Machina, a legal analytics start-up, needed cash to drive its continued growth trajectory, and had an appealing Series B term sheet in hand. Founded initially as a joint public interest project between SLS and Stanford's computer science department, Lex Machina had spun off to create a language processing software and machine learning platform to glean insights from legal documents, to support decision making at each stage of the litigation process. Similar to other start-ups, Lex Machina's investors held preferred stock, its founders held common shares, and employees received options granting them the right to buy common shares. After an informal acquisition offer from Bloomberg, the Lex Machina board explored competing acquisition bids. LexisNexis, a longtime leader in the legal database field, emerged as the highest bidder. Should Lex Machina pursue the Series B - or was this the right time to consider acquisition offers? What would be the best option for the company's future - and for the existing stakeholders?
This case describes a fictional company, FlexShyft, as its cofounders navigate and negotiate the terms of an offer to invest in the company's Series B financing round. The cofounders review and evaluate each clause of the term sheet from the venture capital firm Storm Point Ventures to understand the implications for the company, FlexShyft's existing investors, and themselves. The case is designed to be taught as a simulated negotiation, in which students are split into two groups and asked to either roleplay as investors from Storm Point or FlexShyft cofounders. Students in both groups will be given additional information - the B1 or B2 case - and be asked to negotiate the terms to arrive at a deal.
This case follows the organic growth story of ServiceNow, a workflow platform serving enterprise customers. ServiceNow found product-market fit in streamlining workflows for IT service management. It later evolved its product, engineering, and go-to-market organizations to expand first into adjacencies within IT and then into additional domains such as HR, customer service, and others. The case charts ServiceNow's path of organic growth towards $10 billion in revenue, challenging students to consider decisions around build vs. buy, organizational design, innovation investments, and the leveraging of a unified platform technology.
George Kurtz founded CrowdStrike in 2011 to bring next-generation cybersecurity products to the marketplace. CrowdStrike used artificial intelligence to train its detection agent on evolving threats. This approach was revolutionary in an industry that had previously been fighting against previously detected and catalogued threats. CrowdStrike grew quickly, with impressive financial metrics. The company went public in 2019, and continued to evolve its suite of product offerings. CrowdStrike also found itself in the middle of a few high-profile breaches, first at the Democratic National Committee, and in the Solar Winds hack. The severity of those attacks underscored CrowdStrike's thesis: cybersecurity would impact every person at every company in every industry. To be able to reach its aspirations, CrowdStrike needed to build a company that could service customers and make it turnkey to use its services. Kurtz saw the opportunity in the industry, and he was eager to continue to capture his share of it.
This case details the journey of Sandeep Mathrani as he took over as CEO of WeWork, a flexible space provider, in the aftermath of the company's attempted IPO. To execute his turnaround plan, Mathrani must navigate a global pandemic, execute layoffs, rebuild the company's reputation, renegotiate contracts with landlords, and rebuild trust with members and employees. Further, Mathrani must consider how to navigate a post-pandemic world as the leader of a public company that was increasingly blurring the line between digital and physical.
Cantaloupe Systems expected to celebrate its first quarterly profit, and the company's proprietary machine-to-machine communication technology was a hit with owners of vending machines-and investors. Cantaloupe's systems provided real-time sales data, allowing vending machine operators to efficiently pre-pack the exact items needed for each machine before leaving the warehouse that day. But Cantaloupe's auditors threw the company a curve ball during a routine audit, insisting that the revenue recognition policy be changed in a way which would significantly reduce Cantaloupe's revenue growth and profit. Cantaloupe's leaders felt blindsided by this change in revenue recognition-wasn't their current accounting policy a more accurate picture of the firm's economic activities? Most importantly, they wondered how a change in revenue recognition would affect investors' valuation of the company and the incentives of their sales force as well as other aspects of their operations.
Foodics aimed to develop a point-of-sale system that offered food and beverage establishments an all-in-one workflow solution, providing a digital menu system to replace outdated analog systems and paper stickers to update menu prices. The case study discusses the hurdles and complexities of bringing what appeared to be a logical and simple digital solution to market, as well as plan for strategic expansion across multiple countries. Integrating Foodics' digital meus into existing point-of-sale systems would involve unexpected challenges, as the founders soon realized restaurants and coffee shops in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Middle East relied on proprietary technology platforms for many of their business operations. Further complicating matters, the highly individualized rules, laws, and ways of doing business in different cities would require local staff and expertise, and a large field sales organization.
A family health crisis, difficulties making urgent medical appointments, and inefficient doctor-patient communications had convinced two tech entrepreneurs that Saudi Arabia's health care system was ripe for a digital intervention. Digital health technologies had focused primarily on health care providers, leaving patients in Saudi Arabia largely on the sidelines-was telehealth, and real-time patient communication tools, the next big digital revolution for the 33 million people in the Kingdom? And could this model expand to other Middle East countries and beyond? This case study describes the founding of Cura in 2016 and the cofounders' exploration of various telemedicine models and problem-solving efforts as challenges arose. The case concludes with a discussion of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the company.
This case details the challenges faced by Marc Jones as the CEO of Aeris Communications (Aeris), a privately owned software company that provided Internet of Things (IoT) networks and services to automotive, fleet, and health care customers. In the case, Jones leads Aeris through a major industry transformation and considers how best to drive continued innovation and growth while navigating increasingly complicated "coopetition" with customers and partners as a result of Aeris's place in the technology stack.
The LiveRamp in 2020 case follows the story of Anneka Gupta as she rises from one of LiveRamp's first product managers to president and head of products and platforms, responsible for overseeing the company's product, engineering, marketing, and general and administrative functions.
The Klockner case follows CEO Gisbert Ruhl and his team as they prepare for the operational consequences of digital transformation at the century-old German steel distributor. In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, the Klockner team must rethink their sales, operations, people practices, and organizational structure to prepare for a future of increased automation and online platform sales for steel and other metals.