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The case follows PayPal, a digital payments platform that found early success processing online payments for purchases on eBay, which acquired the company in 2002. The case begins by describing the decision by eBay in 2014 to spin off PayPal and the strategic challenges facing its new CEO, Dan Schulman, who encountered significant strategic issues leading PayPal as an independent company. When the separation from eBay finalized in July 2015, PayPal was in the midst of a multi-year technology reconstruction. Additionally, the digital payments landscape had changed dramatically, extending beyond eCommerce into mobile payments, global remittances, peer-to-peer transfers, and offline transactions. The case presents several trials facing Schulman, including how to innovate quickly in a large organization, whether and how to recreate PayPal's vision, and how to both partner and compete successfully with new entrants in the market.

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.

Virsto, a storage virtualization company, was founded in 2007 by Mark Davis, Alex Miroshnichenko, and Serge Pashenkov. Davis founded Virsto after managing a series of technology startups, many of which were ultimately acquired by big name players such as Dell and HP. Virsto represented the first venture Davis built from the ground up, and it was intended to do for storage virtualization what VMware had done for server virtualization. At the beginning of Davis' journey, he and his cofounders faced a daunting decision: slow the pace of product development to wait for the market leader, VMware, to develop the functionality whereby Virsto's product could "plug in" to VMware's hypervisor, or go to market immediately with Microsoft Hyper-V, a new entrant with a still uncertain future. Davis gambled on immediate commercialization via a second-tier player vs. waiting around for VMware. While his decision brought Virsto to market more rapidly, the team soon found that Virsto's product far exceeded the needs of Microsoft's audience. Therefore, in 2011, Virsto was poised and ready when VMware announced the capability to integrate with external products, and Virsto quickly saw its market potential explode. VMware, which had been working on its own storage product that had yet to gain traction, saw the tremendous potential of acquiring Virsto to accelerate its storage solution. As VMware's interest to acquire Virsto crystallized into an extremely low-ball offer, Davis faced the difficult decision of whether he could negotiate a price with VMware that would make his investors, employees, and stakeholders happy, find another higher-paying acquirer, or allow the company to continue to build market value as the clear leader in storage virtualization. Part B describes the challenging negotiations that Davis went through with VMware to finally arrive at a price before both sides reached the dreaded "deal fatigue." After presenting the price to his board, one board member

Virsto, a storage virtualization company, was founded in 2007 by Mark Davis, Alex Miroshnichenko, and Serge Pashenkov. Davis founded Virsto after managing a series of technology startups, many of which were ultimately acquired by big name players such as Dell and HP. Virsto represented the first venture Davis built from the ground up, and it was intended to do for storage virtualization what VMware had done for server virtualization. At the beginning of Davis' journey, he and his cofounders faced a daunting decision: slow the pace of product development to wait for the market leader, VMware, to develop the functionality whereby Virsto's product could "plug in" to VMware's hypervisor, or go to market immediately with Microsoft Hyper-V, a new entrant with a still uncertain future. Davis gambled on immediate commercialization via a second-tier player vs. waiting around for VMware. While his decision brought Virsto to market more rapidly, the team soon found that Virsto's product far exceeded the needs of Microsoft's audience. Therefore, in 2011, Virsto was poised and ready when VMware announced the capability to integrate with external products, and Virsto quickly saw its market potential explode. VMware, which had been working on its own storage product that had yet to gain traction, saw the tremendous potential of acquiring Virsto to accelerate its storage solution. As VMware's interest to acquire Virsto crystallized into an extremely low-ball offer, Davis faced the difficult decision of whether he could negotiate a price with VMware that would make his investors, employees, and stakeholders happy, find another higher-paying acquirer, or allow the company to continue to build market value as the clear leader in storage virtualization.

This industry note covers how new players in cloud file sharing and storage (such as Dropbox and Box) are reshaping the overall enterprise content management (ECM) software industry in 2014. The note presents the major incumbent firms in the ECM industry in 2014, and then describes in depth 1) the latest technology, market and business model changes that potentially enable a disruption of that industry, and 2) the key new industry players. It also discusses the implications of the convergence between two industries: Small and medium business (SMB) file sharing and ECM. In addition, the note considers the strategic challenges facing these two categories of players in shaping the future of the converged industry.

The SurveyMonkey case portrays the evolution of the company from its founding in 1999 through to 2014. SurveyMonkey was launched by Ryan Finley, a young computer science graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to address the dearth of easy-to-use, affordable online survey tools on the market. In 2009, Finley sold the company to Spectrum Equity and Bain Capital Ventures, having recognized the need for a partner to help the company achieve its full potential. David Goldberg, an entrepreneur and former Yahoo! executive, took the helm as CEO and immediately put in place his plan to set the company on track to scale at a consistent and rapid pace of growth. Goldberg's primary initiatives in the early days were to hire a strong management team, rebuild the entire technology platform, and expand internationally. As it made substantial progress on these fronts, SurveyMonkey completed several acquisitions and began to expand its feature set and product offerings to include SurveyMonkey Audience (panels of survey respondents) and survey templates, among others. The company completed an $800 million secondary financing raise in 2012 to provide liquidity to employees and investors in lieu of an IPO and charged forward in its efforts to transform its survey tool to a full-blown platform. Though SurveyMonkey had established itself as the dominant player in the direct-to-consumer market by 2013, it began building out an enterprise offering to compete against the other large players in the growing enterprise feedback management space. Having achieved tremendous growth in its 15-year history, the majority of which took place since the 2009 acquisition, as Goldberg and his team looked ahead to 2014, they faced the critical question of how to prioritize SurveyMonkey's avenues for growth-international expansion, quality initiatives, enterprise, platform growth-so as to best position the company to achieve its full potential.

The case follows Scott Painter and his executive team as they deal with a crisis that threatens the survival of TrueCar, a company founded by Painter to improve consumers' car buying experiences. TrueCar's automotive dealer network, from which the company earns its revenue, is rapidly declining in size as dealers leave to protest TrueCar's practices. The case also describes Painter's career and his personality as context for the situation. Painter and his team must persuade dealers to rejoin its network in order to survive, which will require the company to rethink its identity.

This case focuses on the investment strategy employed by 500 Startups, an early-stage investment firm founded by Dave McClure. McClure, an outspoken personality in Silicon Valley, believes that the venture capital industry is not innovating quickly enough to adapt to large-scale changes. The cost of starting a company has plummeted over time, enabling investors to write smaller and smaller checks. The exit options for companies have expanded, allowing investors to realize returns earlier than in the past, though typically at lower valuations. Major customer acquisition platforms are enabling startups to disrupt traditional businesses. Finally, opportunities for investment abound overseas in rapidly growing emerging markets, in McClure's opinion. Though not everyone in Silicon Valley agrees with all of McClure ideas, he seeks to scale 500 Startups into the first "guild-based" international venture capital firm.

Dopfner had directed Axel Springer to approach this task with a two-stage digital transformation strategy process. Beginning in 2006, the company focused on organic growth and late-stage digital acquisitions. This stage of the strategy process had centered around profitability and the infusion of digitization into the corporate culture. In 2013, the second stage of the strategy process was driven by Dopfner's formulation of the firm's corporate mission to become "The Leading Digital Publisher" and his defining the company's business as its branded content and not its distribution channels. With this new strategy, Axel Springer intended to espouse early-stage investments and entrepreneurship and grow revenue through three business models: paid content, marketing, and classified advertising. As of 2013, Dopfner's two-stage digital transformation strategy had been a stunning success. Axel Springer had more than 12,800 employees, total revenues of $3.9 billion, and EBITDA of $625 million. The company had exceeded the goals it had set for digital media contributions to revenue and EBITDA, achieved reach in 44 countries, and serviced 98 million unique digital visitors worldwide. Looking forward in April 2014, however, it was clear that the future still held many challenges. Dopfner knew that Axel Springer would need to continue to successfully balance digital and traditional media business strategies, further reestablish the firm's identity, and continue to pioneer the cultural transition within the organization.

CEO Aaron Levie co-founded Box as a student at USC in 2004. Less than 10 years later, Box had become one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies in Silicon Valley, serving more than 180,000 businesses including marquee customers such as Procter and Gamble, Panasonic, and Avaya. Despite this success, Levie was concerned about the future. He and his leadership team would need to overcome significant hurdles to turn Box into one of the next great enterprise software companies. This case explores how Levie planned to evolve Box from online storage to a data platform in the cloud. It follows the company's attempt to shift from collaborative sharing of information to becoming a platform for accessing critical data. Issues covered include: managing competitive threats from large, well-funded companies such as Microsoft and Citrix, delivering enterprise-class solutions with consumer-grade ease-of-use, and maintaining Box's distinctive and fun culture as the company grew and added more disciplined business processes.

The La Boulange: Exiting to a Large Strategic Buyer case follows the evolution of the La Boulange bakery and café chain and its eventual buyout by Starbucks Corporation. First, the case relates the founding story of La Boulange by its CEO Pascal Rigo. Then, the case discusses the controlling investment made by Sebastien Lepinard and the subsequent changes in La Boulange's strategy and governance structure. The case then discusses a buyout offer for the company and turmoil amongst leadership. Finally, the case delves into the buyout offer from Starbucks.

The La Boulange: Exiting to a Large Strategic Buyer case follows the evolution of the La Boulange bakery and café chain and its eventual buyout by Starbucks Corporation. First, the case relates the founding story of La Boulange by its CEO Pascal Rigo. Then, the case discusses the controlling investment made by Sebastien Lepinard and the subsequent changes in La Boulange's strategy and governance structure. The case then discusses a buyout offer for the company and turmoil amongst leadership. Finally, the case delves into the buyout offer from Starbucks.

In 2010, First Solar was the global leader in photovoltaic (PV) modules and looked to dominate the market going forward. The company's strong market position was largely predicated on its proprietary Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) cell technology, which had allowed First Solar to achieve the lowest cost in the industry. Despite its success to date, the company faced significant challenges in 2010. Declining subsidies in major markets in the EU, increased competition from well-heeled Chinese manufacturers, and the risk of disruption from higher efficiency technologies all threatened to undermine the progress that First Solar had made. The case provides a backdrop for analysis of how significant changes in the external market environment alter the relative importance of a company's distinctive competencies and require the development of new competencies. Specifically, the declining growth in subsidy markets requires First Solar to seek new sustainable markets in which PV solar is viable in the absence of subsidies. Success in these markets requires development of new skills not necessary for pure-play module manufacturing. In addition, the case explores key elements of technology leadership and mitigation of disruptive forces as the industry leader. Furthermore, the case examines the rationale for vertical integration within the solar industry and confronts the question of business definition. Management at First Solar must consider whether the company is simply in the module business in 2010 or whether its development and EPC capabilities have made it a more general energy company. The case also details the company's financial strategy, highlighting the intimate linkages with the overall corporate strategy. Finally, the company's corporate culture and management control systems are examined for their effectiveness at aligning the organization amidst significant external change.

Shortly after entering business school at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, Eric Baker and Jeff Fluhr decided that they would start a business focused on the secondary market for event tickets. Explores how Baker and Fluhr launched their company, the challenges they faced, and the strategies they pursued. Provides detailed information on company operations as well as on competitors, such as eBay. Positions readers to evaluate the original premise on which the company's growth plans were based--cost-effective customer acquisition through high-profile partners--and develop an alternative strategy.