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The Tiny Prints case describes the founding of the online stationery company in 2004, through its growth and evolution to 2007. The three cofounders bootstrapped the company from the beginning, primarily so that they could retain control over the decision-making and strategic direction of the company. While that decision allowed the cofounders flexibility and independence, it also led to capital constraints and a "good enough" culture that had a variety of positive and negative implications for the company. Ultimately, Tiny Prints was able to grow because of its very specific focus on the birth announcement, and later holiday, market, an emphasis on customer service and innovations in design and distribution. As of 2007, the founders faced questions regarding their future growth strategy, particularly given increasing competition in the market, and were at an inflection point where they needed to consider the important decision of bringing in outside capital.

The OpenTable case describes the company's evolution from its startup phase in 1998 to its decision to go public ten years later. The company transitioned through three CEOs until it hired Jeff Jordan, former head of PayPal and general manager of eBay North America, to help take the company public. The case describes the various factors a company must consider when going public, including the company's long-term potential, the fiduciary responsibility to investors, the regulations associated with Sarbanes-Oxley, the time and energy required of the management team and financial staff to meet regulators' and investors' needs as a public company, and the obvious financial and branding benefits, among others. OpenTable has just selected Merrill Lynch as its lead bank when the U.S. financial markets collapse virtually collapse overnight in the fall of 2008, creating a decision point for the management team and board to either continue forward with the process or wait an indefinite amount of time until the economy gains more stability.

Nuru International was founded in 2008 as a social venture with the goal to eradicate extreme poverty around the world by helping the rural poor achieve self-sufficiency. The case follows Jake Harriman, founder and executive director, through the multiple human resource challenges he must face in building his nonprofit organization. The first of four vignettes involves Kevin Newton, one of Nuru's first employees, after his promotion to international agricultural director. In his new role, Newton become increasingly vocal and adversarial, voicing his opinions throughout the organization, and Jake must decide how to best handle the situation. The second vignette describes the poorly-handled termination of Nuru's contract grant writer and how Jake must deal with the employee and his supervisor. Finally, an unfortunate accident leads to Jake's absence at the company offsite resulting in two unfortunate situations. In the first, Nuru's recently terminated director of development publicly misrepresents the circumstances leading to his dismissal to the full group of employees attending the offsite. In the second, the employees compile an overwhelming list of gripes about the company, in Jake's absence, which he must ultimately address.

Jessica Herrin, founder and CEO of Stella & Dot, started her entrepreneurial career as the co-founder of Wedding Channel, an experience which laid the foundation for her most recent venture, a direct sales jewelry business. Jessica's main goal in launching the business was to provide women with an alternate career platform to run their own business under their own terms. The case describes the evolution of her company, from its modest start in Jessica's living room through the birth of two children, to annual revenues of $100 million in 2010, just 8 years after its founding. The case additionally describes the direct sales approach as an alternate to the more conventional sales platforms with which students are familiar.

These vignettes are based on a fictional organization, Starling Systems, in which Jack Swain, Starling's COO, has been selected by the company's board of directors to replace the recently departed CEO. Jack must deal with four challenging situations in his early days as CEO. The first involves managing a difficult conversation with Robert Cortez, Starling's senior vice president of finance, who was also vying for the CEO position. Jack cannot use title or compensation to convince Cortez not to leave so must somehow come up with alternate reasons to compel this valuable management team member to stay. The second vignette deals with Jack's revelation based on a conversation with Starling's recently department director of business development that the company's vice president of sales may be mistreating his employees. The third vignette finds Jack in a sticky situation where he has offered the COO position to an outside candidate, and he now must explain to his vice president of operations, currently serving as interim COO, why she was not offered the position. Finally, Jack must deal with infighting between his top performing customer service representative and his newly-hired vice president of customer service.

The iPierian case profiles a startup biotechnology company leveraging the recent development of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)-adult stem cells that have been reprogrammed to a "pluripotent" state whereby they can differentiate into approximately 200 different cell types in the body. The science in this field is in the nascent stages, but the pace of change is rapid as new discoveries are made and as companies devise applications for the technology. iPierian has established itself as an early leader in the space by creating a consistent way to create high volumes of high quality iPSCs and subsequently differentiate those cells into motor neurons. The company must decide between three major directions-tools, drug development of therapeutics-in which it can steer the business and continue to develop its technology. iPierian must also make this decision in the context of the role of large pharmaceutical players in the industry with whom they can either partner or potentially compete against in the race to find successful applications for iPSC technology.

In Part A, Valley Systems, a computer hardware company which manufactures high performance internetworking systems, was six months post-IPO and struggling to make their quarterly earnings. Matt Tucker, the company's CEO, was very concerned about the negative impacts of missing their numbers (especially so closely following their IPO) and evaluated the option of swapping some larger deliveries in the next quarter with smaller deliveries in the current quarter to achieve their target revenues. The students are asked to determine what they would do in Tucker's situation and discuss the implications of their decision on the business, investors and employees. Part B reveals that Tucker and his team did decide to adjust their delivery schedule to meet their numbers. Now, two quarters later, the company is in the same predicament-they were almost certain to miss their numbers resulting in low employee morale and high investor anxiety. Once again, Tucker is faced with the question of how to best manage the situation. He considers the option of optimizing the product delivery schedule based on product mix and profit margin. Students are asked to decide whether this "schedule optimization" strategy is good business or revenue manipulation as well as to consider the implications on sales reps and the overall health of the business.

In Part A, Valley Systems, a computer hardware company which manufactures high performance internetworking systems, was six months post-IPO and struggling to make their quarterly earnings. Matt Tucker, the company's CEO, was very concerned about the negative impacts of missing their numbers (especially so closely following their IPO) and evaluated the option of swapping some larger deliveries in the next quarter with smaller deliveries in the current quarter to achieve their target revenues. The students are asked to determine what they would do in Tucker's situation and discuss the implications of their decision on the business, investors and employees. Part B reveals that Tucker and his team did decide to adjust their delivery schedule to meet their numbers. Now, two quarters later, the company is in the same predicament-they were almost certain to miss their numbers resulting in low employee morale and high investor anxiety. Once again, Tucker is faced with the question of how to best manage the situation. He considers the option of optimizing the product delivery schedule based on product mix and profit margin. Students are asked to decide whether this "schedule optimization" strategy is good business or revenue manipulation as well as to consider the implications on sales reps and the overall health of the business.

Part A of the case opens in July of 2009 with Becky Splitt, CEO of StudyBlue, facing a series of difficult decisions. These include: determining the appropriate business model to monetize the StudyBlue site, which customer segment to target, and how much new capital to raise (and from whom). The case tells the story of how StudyBlue was begun as a side project of Chris Klündt and Steve Wallman in 2006 and how it evolved into a full-fledge start-up with seven employees. Over the course of three years, StudyBlue develops a healthy following of college users and adds significant new features and functionality. However, by the close of the case, there is still uncertainly around how quickly it can grow revenue in the future. Given new competitors on the horizon and the window for Series A funding round closing, Splitt must make her decisions quickly. Part B of the case describes Splitt's decision of choosing a financing partner for StudyBlue's Series A funding round. She must weigh the benefits and disadvantages of partnering with a mature angel investor group where she would face less restrictive terms than partnering with a venture capital firm but also less money and consequently a shorter operating runway. Her other option is to partner with a venture capital partner which will guarantee savvy advisors, recruiting help and more dollars but also more restrictive terms and a potential requirement to relocate the company from Wisconsin to the west coast. Finally, Part B of the case highlights the many changes in the competitive landscape between 2009 and 2010, including the introduction of two new players and the acquisition of several others by large corporate entities.

Supplement must be used with case E373A