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Describes the founding and rapid growth of Siebel Systems. Focuses on how Siebel's alliance program enabled rapid growth. Explores the challenges CEO Tom Siebel faces in serving smaller customers.

Every aspiring entrepreneur can recite the truisms of the business: Feel comfortable with risk, hire the best people, do what you love, and don't do it for the money alone. Nevertheless, the road to success can be a scramble from one slippery rock to another. And no one knows that better than Dan Bricklin, creator of VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet. In this first-person account, Bricklin, now on his fourth start-up, describes his life as an entrepreneur and professional tinkerer. In addition to the usual suspects for creating a business--solid training, talent, and good timing--he suggests that entrepreneurs need a few more tricks in their bags to thrive during the inevitable ups and downs. First, entrepreneurs need to understand what value they bring to their endeavors. They have to know their limits, both in terms of evaluating their penchant for risk and personal sacrifice and recognizing when their ambitions exceed their skills. They may, for instance, need others to step in when their own talents don't match their businesses' current needs. Second, entrepreneurs shouldn't wait to get started. Or, if they do wait, they should understand that as time goes by, they may become less willing to sacrifice their standard of living for their businesses. Third, entrepreneurs need to recognize that they are not their businesses. They must remember that their companies' failures don't make them awful people. Likewise, their companies' successes don't make them geniuses or superhumans. Indeed, training, talent, and good timing are essential, but entrepreneurs must also have a true passion for what they're doing, and they must possess the humility to know when they need help. Many of today's dot-com entrepreneurs, Bricklin says, have paid a price for their arrogance. Others can learn from their mistakes.

Describes a start-up in the field of nano technology--very small physical structures measured in the billionths of a meter. The company, Surface Logix, has assembled a portfolio of intellectual property and completed some of the R&D work required to develop actual products. Now the company must decide what specific product applications to focus on and what resources are required for that effort.

Nathaniel Gatewood and Sean Daugherty were MBA students at the University of Virginia Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. They each held strong entrepreneurial desires and headed back to school with that in mind. Gatewood knew he wanted to purchase a manufacturing company but was not clear on how he should go about doing so. Daugherty just wanted to work for himself. The pair met in their neighborhood and quickly became friends. Within a short period of time, Gatewood and Daugherty tossed around the idea of becoming partners and exploring a joint venture to purchase a company. Once school started they met another classmate and partner, Eric Anderson, who acted as a catalyst for modeling their purchase plan into a Darden Business Project. In time, Anderson was offered a position in the private equity group where he had interned the previous summer, and he backed out of the partnership. After some soul-searching, Gatewood and Daugherty decided to proceed without him. The pair took many steps in the due diligence process. They assessed their personal skills and interviewed faculty, entrepreneurs, and alumni. Along the way, they explored the concept of a search fund. As they got closer to graduating, Daugherty and Gatewood were forced to decide between securing a search fund and continuing to look for an acquisition or applying for lucrative jobs, like their classmates, and looking for a business to buy later. The case illustrates the development process of two entrepreneurs and serves as an excellent introduction to the search fund concept. It also promotes a discussion of how to plan, manage, and make decisions in an uncertain environment.

Describes the execution of a new economy merger. Officenet, a bricks-and-clicks retailer of office supplies, is sold to an Internet pure-play, Submarino.com. Officenet's founders are in Brazil, where the company recently expanded its operations, and must consider several questions about the company's growth plans and financial position.

Introduces students to the wide variety of family business definitions in literature today. Also reviews prominent typologies of family business systems.

BootCamp4MBA.COM is an online educational Web site that helps students prepare for an MBA program or undergraduate degree. The president of Strategic Management Science, Incorporated, the owner of BootCamp4MBA.COM, struggles to improve the sales of BootCamp's online business school preparatory courses. A comprehensive marketing plan must be developed and implemented quickly, including appropriate pricing, product offerings and market communications necessary to advertise and sell products and services online.

Global Sources Limited is Asia's leading publisher of business-to-business (B2B) trade-related magazines. In the latter half of the 1990s, the Internet became a powerful force for change in the business world, leading to an explosion of Internet-related activities by both traditional bricks and mortar companies, as well as countless upstart dot.coms. The chairman and chief executive officer of Global Sources had foreseen the opportunities afforded by the Internet early on, and had made it an integral part of the company's strategy. Currently, the level of activity in the B2B portal space has evolved so quickly that a noticeable degree of confusion among suppliers, buyers and investors about the merits and drawbacks of these portals has arisen. Moreover, the sustainability of these ventures has been brought into question, which is causing a dramatic reversal of fortunes for many companies. The result is that there are strong signs that the industry will experience a significant consolidation. This has left Global Sources chairman with the key challenge of generating greater visibility among users and potential users of the companies services, as well as greater interest from the investment community in order to remain viable. The company must be able to educate and convey its value proposition to its users, as well as determine whether it should continue to remain an independent player, purchase a competitor, or enter into a strategic alliance.

The OHNo Swim Club is a small non-profit organization whose board of directors is swayed from its mission by one of its wealthy members. In the process the club loses control of its mission, makes a decision that comes close to financially bankrupting the organization and eventually loses several members before it rebuilds itself with a stronger dedication to its mission. Through the rebuilding process, it learns the importance of choosing board members with financial sophistication, the difficulties of a start-up enterprise and the importance of maintaining a mission and communicating that mission to members.

Strategic Intelligence Pte. Limited is a research and new-media company that provides Asian-based economic and political information. The managing editor is facing several challenges in building a new online business intelligence service that focuses on Asia's new economy. As the person responsible for the company's first Internet related initiative, he is expected to design, manage and help market the new initiative that will be independent from, yet complementary to, the company's existing events-oriented and research services. Although he is satisfied with the content that has been developed, he still needs to resolve several issues regarding target audience, pricing policy, revenue diversification options and service awareness. A sense of urgency pervades the situation, since he is expected to ensure that the new service will contribute 25 per cent of total company revenues within the next year.

Introduces Handspring, a manufacturer of handheld devices, and concentrates particularly on the company's and founders' historical and forward-looking relationships. At the time of the case, Handspring is generating approximately $500 million annually in sales and is a leading brand of PDAs. The company founders are Donna Dubinsky, Ed Colligan, and Jeff Hawkins--the "legendary" team that developed Palm Computing's handheld PDA in 1992. The founders look back to their rationale for striking out on their own from Palm and the lessons learned and different paths followed in this second company founding. Focuses on the creation, valuation, and nurture of Handspring's myriad relationships, including supplier and manufacturer relationships, marketing agreements, and new business partnerships.

Includes a brief overview of key challenges facing recent HBS graduates seeking funding for a business, followed by a 22-page excerpt from the Kingsley Management business plan. Describes Matthew Lieb and Chris Jones, two of the partners who developed the business plan for Kingsley Management, as they prepare to meet with potential investors. Lieb and Jones are particularly concerned about the investors' financial returns and the structure of the new business entity (i.e., C-corp. vs. LLC). Outlines several questions facing Lieb and his co-founders, which students are asked to resolve.

GE's chief litigation counsel sought to rationalize litigation flow by viewing it as a manufacturing process. By applying the principles of Six Sigma, P.D. Villareal created an Early Dispute Resolution (EDR) system that enabled both lawyers and managers to work together to address potential disputes early and efficiently. Though the savings in time and energy were tremendous and obvious, evaluating the financial savings proved trickier. Also on the horizon was the challenge of spreading the program throughout the enormous GE global organization.

Early Dispute Resolution (EDR) has proved successful at GE. Yet, when Michael McIlwrath, new counsel at an Italian subsidiary, attempted to translate it to his company, problems arose. He had to gain internal acceptance, and explain the concept of early mediation to a European culture not accustomed to the practice. This case examines the successes and challenges of translating an American dispute resolution program to an overseas context and explores four studies of litigation cases facing McIlwrath.

MessageTech, Inc. provides digital media technology and solutions that help clients customize advertising to their specific needs. The company's proprietary technology has the potential to revolutionize the way large, geographically dispersed retailers approach advertising and promotion by allowing clients the flexibility to customize advertising content, in real-time, to suit the conditions of each individual site. Results of beta testing indicate that clients' sales increase significantly after installation of the messageTech system. Yet, the company has been unable to close on any major sales of the system. The newly appointed chief executive officer has a mandate to commercialize the new technology. He must develop a strategy that balances the company's needs for short-term performance against the actions that will ensure a viable competitive position over the long-term.

WaveRider Communications, Inc. was a Toronto-based company with a mission to become the leader in global wireless technology by developing, selling and supporting products that enabled wireless Internet service providers. It recently launched market its Last Mile Solution, offering Internet service providers the opportunity to provide wireless Internet access at broadband speeds in the unlicensed 2.4 gigahertz spectrum. The wireless Internet access industry was relatively untapped and WaveRider's vice-president of marketing wondered whether the company, as it started its growth phase, should seek an alliance with a competing technology company. To determine the feasibility of this idea, he needed to classify the competition, review the customer barriers and evaluate which technology was the best fit.

Only a few weeks ago, Greg McNally, the CEO of software start-up DataClear, had called an off-site in Montana to celebrate his company's success in racking up $5 million in sales from its first product, ClearCloud--a powerful data analysis package. But that was before his talented and successful head of sales, Susan Moskowski, gave him the news about VisiDat, a British start-up that was testing a data analysis package of its own that was only weeks away from launch. "We need to agree on a strategy for dealing with this kind of competition," Susan had told Greg. "If they start out as a global player, and we stay hunkered down in the U.S., they'll kill us." Because of that news, Greg had changed the agenda of the off-site, instead having Susan present the options for taking DataClear global. The meeting had taken place two weeks ago, at which point the consensus had been to establish a European presence and probably one in Japan. The only question seemed to be whether to do it from scratch or to form partnerships with local players. Did DataClear really need to go global? Should it instead expand into different domestic markets? Should it do both at once? Could the company afford to? In R0106A and R0106Z, four commentators offer their advice in this fictional case study.

Only a few weeks ago, Greg McNally, the CEO of software start-up DataClear, had called an off-site in Montana to celebrate his company's success in racking up $5 million in sales from its first product, ClearCloud--a powerful data analysis package. But that was before his talented and successful head of sales, Susan Moskowski, gave him the news about VisiDat, a British start-up that was testing a data analysis package of its own that was only weeks away from launch. "We need to agree on a strategy for dealing with this kind of competition," Susan had told Greg. "If they start out as a global player, and we stay hunkered down in the U.S., they'll kill us." Because of that news, Greg had changed the agenda of the off-site, instead having Susan present the options for taking DataClear global. The meeting had taken place two weeks ago, at which point the consensus had been to establish a European presence and probably one in Japan. The only question seemed to be whether to do it from scratch or to form partnerships with local players. Did DataClear really need to go global? Should it instead expand into different domestic markets? Should it do both at once? Could the company afford to? In R0106A and R0106Z, four commentators offer their advice on this fictional case study.

Only a few weeks ago, Greg McNally, the CEO of software start-up DataClear, had called an off-site in Montana to celebrate his company's success in racking up $5 million in sales from its first product, ClearCloud--a powerful data analysis package. But that was before his talented and successful head of sales, Susan Moskowski, gave him the news about VisiDat, a British start-up that was testing a data analysis package of its own that was only weeks away from launch. "We need to agree on a strategy for dealing with this kind of competition," Susan had told Greg. "If they start out as a global player, and we stay hunkered down in the U.S., they'll kill us." Because of that news, Greg had changed the agenda of the off-site, instead having Susan present the options for taking DataClear global. The meeting had taken place two weeks ago, at which point the consensus had been to establish a European presence and probably one in Japan. The only question seemed to be whether to do it from scratch or to form partnerships with local players. Did DataClear really need to go global? Should it instead expand into different domestic markets? Should it do both at once? Could the company afford to? In R0106A and R0106Z, four commentators offer their advice on this fictional case study.

The president of Blinds To Go, a small retail fabricator of custom-made blinds, announces his plans of expanding the business across North America one region at a time. With substantial backing from an investment firm, the business has quintupled its revenues in less than two years and is looking to expand aggressively across the United States. However, the company has experienced significant turnover in its senior management positions. The company struggles with the issue of how to get and keep the senior management talent needed to achieve the growth the company wants.