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The Coco-Mat case tracks the development of the bedding brand from its initial concept in 1989 to the iconic status it had achieved by 2016. During that time, it went through a progressive refining of its customer proposition and brand values, developed a global retail network and expanded into hotels and wood bikes, among other areas. Back in 1989, Paul and Mike Efmorfidis embarked on a wild journey to develop an original, Greecebased sleeping system company. At the end of 2015, Coco-Mat was running stores in 14 countries, employed 250+ people, most of them in Greece, and this was nowhere close to the end of the story, barely an appetizer. They had started on a beach with virtually nothing, invented new concepts in an industry they knew little about and they could only be described as fairly resistant to change. They withstood one of the worst economic crises ever seen by a country, and they were now discussing further international expansion and accelerating growth. Could they continue to operate with their initial business model? Was it time to solidify the company and install more systems and structure? How could they retain their agility? What kind of culture did they want to establish for the company and leave behind as a legacy? The past had been nothing short of amazing but where should they take the company next?

This case follows two ex-McKinsey consultants, Magnus Olsson and Mudassir Sheikha, who in search of finding their true purpose decide to found Careem, a Dubai-based ride-hailing service. Following its launch in July 2012, Careem experiences rapid growth of 30 percent per month in the UAE and other countries in the MENA region, surpassing the co-founders' expectations. However, as a result of such immense growth, the startup struggles with various operational and cultural organizational tensions. These challenges are described from the perspective of the founders and through the eyes of Deepika Thakur, one of the early employees. By 2014, in order to succeed in Saudi Arabia, the largest and most complex market in the Gulf, Olsson and Sheikha recognize the importance of finding a strong leader to head the Saudi operations. They have their sights on a specific German-Saudi entrepreneur, Abdulla Elyas, but he has so far declined both of their initial proposals to join Careem. In the backdrop, Uber has developed a successful track record in the West, raising close to $2 billion dollars globally, and has a growing presence in the UAE following its launch there in August 2013. Finding themselves at a crossroads, Olsson and Sheikha must figure out how to address several critical organizational issues, decide how to bring Elyas on board, and ensure a robust strategy to maintain its leadership position in the region.

This case is about Tinder. It discusses different business models and ways of structuring the initial team. With a $6 million investment from IAC/Interactive in 2010, Dinesh Moorjani founded Hatch Labs to build mobile apps. His mission was to attract entrepreneurial talent to work on Lab projects which, after gaining traction, could be acquired by IAC or spun out as independent companies. To pitch talent to work at Hatch, Moorjani laid out a framework to compare the expected returns to founding an independent company versus joining an incubator. While Hatch provided lower levels of equity ownership in a single company, Moorjani argued that the complementary inputs provided by the Lab and the diversification from holding equity in the portfolio of Lab projects made the incubator structure attractive. After growing several projects from different teams, at the end of the case, Moorjani faces two critical choices: Should he support a B2B merchant services business or a dating app, Glow (a disguised name for Tinder). Second, should he go forward with a second Hatch Labs? Was the success of the first Hatch experiment replicable? The case can be supplemented with a startup valuation Exercise (#818-705), and a technical/background note on "Valuing Employee Equity at Early Stage Ventures" (#819-167).

Founded in 2008 in Singapore and China, ActSocial was a social marketing company that initially provided brands with word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing services. The firm then adjusted its model to focus on providing online social media and digital content marketing services. After significant success from 2013 to 2015, ActSocial was fully acquired by Linkfluence, a leading global social media monitoring and research company. As part of this larger company, the new leadership team at Linkfluence Asia now needed to decide how to proceed and wondered if they would have influence over the direction of their product, hiring decisions, team-building, and growth plans.

OrganiGram Holdings Inc. (OrganiGram), a New Brunswick-based company, was a licensed producer of medical cannabis in Canada. On April 20, 2016, the Canadian government announced that legislation to legalize recreational cannabis would be introduced in the spring of 2017 with the intention of having it become law in the spring of 2018. The announcement triggered expansion activities at all of Canada’s largest licensed producers of cannabis. However, there were many unknowns in terms of how the legalization of recreational cannabis would happen. What would the timeline be? Who would be allowed to grow cannabis? In anticipation of regulatory changes, OrganiGram needed to analyze the Canadian cannabis industry and engage in a scenario-planning exercise. How could OrganiGram move through this time of uncertainty, while both creating a strategy for the anticipated recreational cannabis market and continuing to work on its medical cannabis sales?

In its first three years, East Coast Lifestyle, a Nova Scotia-based apparel company and one of Canada's fastest-growing business ventures, sold more than 500,000 products and received plenty of publicity from celebrities who wore its gear. To continue its substantial growth, the company needed a market that offered room for expansion. In early 2017, the 25-year-old chief executive officer faced several options, including developing the company’s Canadian brand portfolio with West Coast Lifestyle; expanding its main brand, East Coast Lifestyle, into the United States; and licensing the brand abroad. The real question was which strategy to pursue, and more importantly, how to implement the chosen strategy and roll it out.

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?

In 2012, after the U.S. government passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, the founder of Hudson Integrated, a website development company, decided to launch StartupValley, an equity crowdfunding company focused on the Title III provisions of the JOBS Act. These provisions allowed companies to solicit equity investments directly from small investors by using an intermediary registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, consisting of either a broker–dealer or an approved funding portal. However, three years passed before all Title III regulations were finalized, and more than six months later, they came into effect. During that time, the market became crowded with both start-ups and established companies. In 2016, when the Title III provisions finally went into effect, the entrepreneur faced two key challenges. How should he position StartupValley for success in this new industry? And how should he balance his own time and resources between his existing web development business and the new venture?

In 2005, when Souq.com was founded, the Middle East had tremendous potential for e-commerce: Its total population was more than 350 million, half of whom were younger than 25. But the region was highly fragmented in terms of laws and customs, logistics, and payment infrastructure. Mouchawar tells how Souq grew from auction website to B2C-only business by enabling alternative payment methods and managing delivery in a region where basic logistics systems were still evolving. The largest e-commerce provider in the Middle East today, Souq operates in seven countries representing more than 135 million people--and it was recently acquired by Amazon.

When choosing a CEO, boards typically take into account the particular circumstances the company faces: Is it in need of a turnaround, say, or will it be scaling for growth? But firms don't usually pay much attention to contextual challenges when hiring for and promoting people into lower-level leadership roles, instead preferring jack-of-all-trades candidates. A new study from CEB suggests that they will be more successful if they consider the specific leadership context when hiring for every level and identifies the 27 contextual challenges that matter most.

SST is a technology company that was formed to address a social problem: gun violence. SST is the global leader in gunfire detection and location technology. SST provides a scalable and reliable gunfire alert and analysis system, which is known as ShotSpotter. Gun violence is a problem in inner cities. As such, this service is most applicable to underserved communities. The company was founded in 1996 by an acoustic engineer who felt that sensors could detect gunfire. The ShotSpotter solution provides information to police departments in cities that have installed the technology to help them quickly respond to events where gun shots were fired. The case also highlights the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data, given SST's use of sensors and data to solve the problem of gun violence.

On April 1, 2016, fashion house Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) announced the departure of its creative director who had been responsible for successfully reviving the struggling YSL brand since 2012. Three days after this surprising departure, the company announced that its next creative director would be a relatively inexperienced, 36-year-old designer. After decades of leadership turmoil and financial instability at YSL, the incoming creative director was facing increasing pressure from stakeholders to build off the success that his predecessor had achieved. The global luxury fashion industry had become increasingly competitive, with multiple brands competing for the industry’s estimated value of €265 billion in 2017. Had YSL made the right decision in selecting this young director? To help YSL remain one of the top brands in the fashion industry, should the new director implement a strategy that builds upon the successful foundation created by his predecessor, or should he develop new strategies?

Curana BVBA was a small family-owned company in Belgium. In the 1990s, it was producing mudguards and fenders as an original equipment manufacturer for the European bicycle industry. As Curana BVBA faced increasing competition in 2009, it needed to make a strategic turnaround. The company focused on the top segments of the market and introduced innovative and design-based bicycle accessories. The company didn't have the competency to develop these new products itself, so it built and relied on an open innovation strategy that included several partners who could develop and manufacture the original products. As the network matured, Curana derived new competencies from the partners, which ultimately allowed Curana to embark on a proactive innovation process, spawning entirely new product designs more rapidly than anyone else in the industry.

Bali Hai Cruises had grown from a start-up company in 1990 to become a thriving multimillion-dollar business in 2017 that employed 460 people on the Indonesian islands of Bali and Lembongan. This solid and consistent business development took place despite a business environment and government that had not always been friendly and positive toward foreign investors. What critical factors brought success to this tourism-based company in such a challenging market? What behaviours and strategies had Bali Hai Cruises followed to build trust, deliver on performance, and resolve challenges in developing this vertically integrated company? The company now faced new challenges in terms of an aging leadership and workforce, the continuing need to manage and maintain its working relationships with the Indonesian government and the harbour authorities, the rapidly developing information technology capacity of the marine tourism industry, and the potential of growing competition. What strategies could Bali Hai Cruises implement to continue its success and growth in 2018 and beyond?

Maha Research Labs Private Limited was a growing pharmaceutical company. It ended 2016 with sales worth ₹508.4 million at 31.2 per cent growth over the previous year. The company’s ambitious goal was to achieve 38 per cent growth and a net revenue of ₹700 million in 2017. In May 2017, on receiving a call from a friend in Turkey suggesting he explore the Turkish pharmaceutical market, the managing director of the company was considering doing so. However, he had some doubts, and wondered what the best way to enter the market in Turkey would be. Was his product range suitable for the Turkish market? What were the possible risks?

In 2015, the owner and the founder of a restaurant business in Dubai was concerned about the company's future expansion and growth. Although it was doing well in terms of profitability, a financial forecast was required for the following year, particularly in light of tough competition in the restaurant business in Dubai.

Supplement to case W17559.

Curana BVBA was a small family-owned company in Belgium. In the 1990s, it was producing mudguards and fenders as an original equipment manufacturer for the European bicycle industry. As Curana BVBA faced increasing competition in 2009, it needed to make a strategic turnaround. The company focused on the top segments of the market and introduced innovative and design-based bicycle accessories. The company didn't have the competency to develop these new products itself, so it built and relied on an open innovation strategy that included several partners who could develop and manufacture the original products. As the network matured, Curana derived new competencies from the partners, which ultimately allowed Curana to embark on a proactive innovation process, spawning entirely new product designs more rapidly than anyone else in the industry.

Bali Hai Cruises had grown from a start-up company in 1990 to become a thriving multimillion-dollar business in 2017 that employed 460 people on the Indonesian islands of Bali and Lembongan. This solid and consistent business development took place despite a business environment and government that had not always been friendly and positive toward foreign investors. What critical factors brought success to this tourism-based company in such a challenging market? What behaviours and strategies had Bali Hai Cruises followed to build trust, deliver on performance, and resolve challenges in developing this vertically integrated company? The company now faced new challenges in terms of an aging leadership and workforce, the continuing need to manage and maintain its working relationships with the Indonesian government and the harbour authorities, the rapidly developing information technology capacity of the marine tourism industry, and the potential of growing competition. What strategies could Bali Hai Cruises implement to continue its success and growth in 2018 and beyond?