This case follows Sam Byker, the Founder and CEO of Atticus, as he creates, scales, and fundraises for the company. Atticus is a platform that serves individuals in need by connecting them with law firms that can help. The case covers the company's history from its inception through to its Series A financing. The case explores the tension Byker faces between Atticus' opportunities for growth and maintaining focus on the company's mission when selecting a lead investor. The first vignette leaves Byker choosing between two Series A term sheets: one from an impact-focused investor, and the other from a venture capital firm with a track-record of building iconic brands. The second vignette explores a set of strategic decisions Byker must make that place growth and impact in tension with one another.
Kiah Williams started SIRUM as a Stanford undergraduate alongside her classmates Adam Kircher and George Wang. Nearly two decades later, the medication donation nonprofit was now operating in five states across the country and had helped facilitate medication donations to reach 150,000 uninsured and underinsured patients. SIRUM's technology enabled donors with excess medication supply to donate unexpired, sealed, non-opioid medications to those who needed it most. SIRUM had been largely funded by philanthropic sources and had secured funding through 2025. Williams was now pondering different growth paths for the nonprofit. SIRUM could attempt to grow quickly by expanding into new states or offering a wider range of medications. It could pressure test its pricing model. Or it could build new lines of business related to data, reporting, and compliance. The growth path was unclear. Williams wanted to demonstrate that SIRUM could be a model for social enterprises to succeed and achieve both deep impact and long-term financial stability. How should she build SIRUM's growth strategy?
Byteboard aims to replace the pre-on-site technical interview for software engineers with a more effective, efficient, and equitable web-based assessment. The case follows the founding team's journey from problem definition and customer development through the testing of their minimum viable product and validation of their core value hypothesis. By recounting Byteboard's early quest towards product-market fit, the case poses several key questions including, "What is the core value hypothesis?" "What features should be tested with customers?" and "How will they know if they proved their hypotheses?"
Abbey Wemimo and Samir Goel founded Esusu in 2018 to help low-to-moderate-income renters build credit history. Esusu, a for-profit impact focused venture, collected rental payments from property managers and reported this data to major credit bureaus, which helped renters improve their credit scores. In April 2020, only six months after closing their first institutional round of capital, New York state issued a lockdown to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this period, the Esusu leadership team addressed numerous priorities-transitioning their team to operate online, managing employee health concerns, calling clients and investors while still running the company's day-to-day operations. Ultimately, Wemimo and Goel must decide whether to cut costs in order to keep Esusu's existing business afloat or build new products and leverage new partnerships to serve renters and property managers during a time of crisis. In this case, students are encouraged to examine the history and evolution of the credit-scoring models used in the U.S. The case also explores the impact that a lack of credit records may have on American families in particular among minority groups. The case chronicles how Esusu sought to tackle these challenges in a time of crisis, as well as the strategic decisions they faced along the way.
The Opendoor case follows head of market operations Megan Meyer as her team develops a strategy to enter Los Angeles, a substantial departure from the existing real estate markets the company had worked in through 2018. Particular issues explored include market segmentation, new market entry strategy, and quantitative analysis of unit economics and addressable markets.
The case follows Erica Mackey, CEO of early childhood education impact venture MyVillage, as she determines the growth path of the company after a recent fundraise. Particular issues explored include tensions between growth and mission, defining and measuring impact, and navigating interrelated areas of impact outside the core focus of an impact venture.
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.
The Off Grid Electric case focuses on the creation, growth, and financing of the company from 2011 through the middle of 2014. The three cofounders saw an opportunity to provide solar electricity to much of Africa through their solar-as-a-service solution, which they launched in Tanzania in 2012. The Off Grid Electric business model was very capital intensive, and the new venture had several risks from the perspective of investors: market, business model, human resources, technology, and exit. As such, CEO Xavier Helgesen needed to think strategically about how-and when-to raise money in order to grow the business. In addition, the executive team needed to be in agreement on the company's growth plan. Should Off Grid Electric focus on rapid growth? Should they emphasize generating cash? What would these choices imply for Off Grid Electric's financing needs? At the end of the case, Helgesen receives two term sheets for a potential Series D financing. One is from Zouk Capital, a financial investor, and another is from Solar City, a strategic investor who had previously invested in Off Grid Electric. Students are asked to evaluate the term sheets from Helgesen's perspective, as well as to analyze an investment in Off Grid Electric from the perspective of an investor.
The CareMessage case describes the evolution of the nonprofit organization from its founding in 2012 through the end of 2014. CareMessage was launched by Vineet Singal, a young biological sciences graduate from Stanford University. Having dealt with his own personal health issues, Singal was passionate about helping patients get the right information, support, and motivation to make better health decisions. Singal was especially determined to help low-income patients, who historically lacked the tools and resources for effective health management. The case emphasizes some of the major challenges and decisions faced by Singal in the organization's early years: the appropriate technology to serve CareMessage's mission, CareMessage's business model (market, pricing, go-to-market strategy, competition), structuring the venture as a nonprofit or for-profit organization, and scaling the business. As of 2014, CareMessage had proven incredibly successful in its ability to serve low-income patients across the United States by targeting health care providers in low-income neighborhoods, yet these opportunities were fairly limited in terms of revenue and profit potential. Thus, Singal faced a dilemma; should CareMessage pursue additional markets, partnerships, and revenue opportunities, or instead stay the course by continuing to focus on low-income health care providers?
Kiva.org was a website through which individuals could connect with opportunities to alleviate poverty via small-scale lending. Founded in 2005, the platform had grown impressively and had facilitated over $500m in loans by 2014. The scale Kiva had achieved was facilitated by its partnerships with microfinance institutions, which managed all of the lending operations for loans made by visitors to the Kiva site. Kiva's team had diverse views of impact, but in its early days Kiva measured impact based primarily on the volume of loans that were made through the platform. A combination of external and internal factors led Kiva's management to explore whether there were other products they could launch which would increase the social impact of the platform. Starting in 2011, two small entrepreneurial teams in the organization were formed to test new models, both of which would operate without microfinance intermediaries. Kiva Labs was set up to create and approve new loan products in partnership with social enterprises and other entities. Kiva Zip was created to experiment with direct lending to individuals via the platform. Labs and Zip created excitement among funders, lenders, and within the team, and Kiva's leadership believed that they had the potential to transform the organization and outpace the impact of the MFI channel. Nonetheless, there were real strategic and operational risks involved, along with questions about the financial sustainability of the new products.
The Sustainable Conservation case presents the story of San Francisco-based nonprofit that was founded to solve environmental problems in California through collaborative partnerships between the public and private sector. The nonprofit had built up strong expertise in the agriculture industry, with an early focus on the issues associated with water quality, air pollution, and land use. With a clear track record and a strong team in place, both the board and management team felt that the organization was poised to have even greater impact by expanding its projects and reach across California. Yet, it would clearly need a major influx of capital to execute upon that vision. Ashley and the board had therefore decided in 2011 to undertake the first major fundraising initiative in Sustainable Conservation's 19-year history. As Ashley read through the feedback from donors who had attended a recent event, she realized there were a number of questions yet to be answered to ensure that the initiative was successful.
Social media is disrupting politics in fundamental ways. For the first time, voters can join with one another and connect with their officials directly at a scale that is unprecedented. We believe that facilitating meaningful connection will result in a new form of civic participation that will profoundly change our world for the better." David Binetti, Founder and CEO, Votizen This case series outlines the business formation of Votizen. Founder and CEO David Binetti's original vision was to facilitate political action and organization. His efforts to start up led him through several manifestations of the original vision, each with its own challenges and quirks. Binetti used the dual lenses of Dave McClure's so-called "Pirate Model" and Steve Blank's "Customer Development Model" with which to navigate the waters. The case contains an unusual amount of detail as to the trials of starting up, as well as the usage and interpretation of the metrics prescribed by McClure and Blank.
Sociable Labs was conceived as a start-up business attempting to use friend recommendations to curate and recommend purchase opportunities on the internet. Much as his Facebook social events app helped friends discover events based on their friends' events, founder Nisan Gabbay wanted to show users what their friends were buying or "liking," in the hope that such knowledge would help guide their purchases and even enable merchants to use Facebook to help grow their sales. How would he discover what his customers needed and what they were willing to pay for?
Sociable Labs was conceived as a start-up business attempting to use friend recommendations to curate and recommend purchase opportunities on the internet. Much as his Facebook social events app helped friends discover events based on their friends' events, founder Nisan Gabbay wanted to show users what their friends were buying or "liking," in the hope that such knowledge would help guide their purchases and even enable merchants to use Facebook to help grow their sales. How would he discover what his customers needed and what they were willing to pay for?
Sociable Labs was conceived as a start-up business attempting to use friend recommendations to curate and recommend purchase opportunities on the internet. Much as his Facebook social events app helped friends discover events based on their friends' events, founder Nisan Gabbay wanted to show users what their friends were buying or "liking," in the hope that such knowledge would help guide their purchases and even enable merchants to use Facebook to help grow their sales. How would he discover what his customers needed and what they were willing to pay for?