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emmtrix Technologies GmbH (emmtrix) was a spinoff company from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, a leading German university, and a result of an excellent-rated research project. At the end of January 2019, the emmtrix founders were preparing for a meeting with investment managers of a venture capital firm in Karlsruhe, Germany. After previous meetings with the investors in which the business concept and technology had been the focus, the main point of the upcoming meeting was to present the start-up’s fundraising goals. The founders were expected to express how much money they wanted to raise and at which valuation of the company. To that end, the start-up team wanted to prepare information on the company’s financial forecasts for the next five years, the fundraising amount to be raised in the initial financing round, and first ideas on the value of the company.

WeWork, a fast-growing but unprofitable real estate firm headquartered in New York, which leased shared office space around the world, announced in September 2019 that it was cancelling its plans for an initial public offering (IPO). In late 2020, as the company weathered the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, several special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) approached WeWork, offering an increasingly popular alternative method for the company’s shares to become publicly traded. In January 2021, WeWork’s new chief executive officer (CEO) was considering an offer from BowX Acquisition Corp., a “blank check” corporation. The CEO and the WeWork board needed to understand the benefits and disadvantages of a SPAC merger.

Dave Balter and Jim Myers co-founded Mylestone, a death tech startup that applied technology to transform how grieving people memorialize the dead. The startup addressed a cultural problem and promised to solve a pressing need in the antiquated, multi-billion dollar death industry. But despite a well-defined market and positive response to the idea, Mylestone made little headway in the funeral industry during its first eighteen months. In response to a series of obstacles, the company made a number of pivots. All startups pivot. But recent changes felt more fundamental. The company had moved away from its initial purpose, business model, and early team. Now, user demand suggested the startup should pivot again, away from death tech to produce custom photo books. The company had pivoted so much already that it barely resembled the venture they founded. Had they pivoted to an entirely new business? With each major change, the passion both founders felt when they started Mylestone waned. Did they want to continue leading the company in the new direction? Balter believed that the new direction would limit the startup's growth capacity and, to complicate matters further, Balter and Myers recently discovered a mutual interest in cryptocurrency. They started a side project in crypto trading that showed signs of taking off in a way Mylestone never would. If they harbored doubts about Mylestone, should they inform investors, close the company, and focus their energy on founding a venture based on their side project? What legal and ethical obligations did they have to Mylestone's investors and employees?

This case covers a common issue concerning traditional manufacturers in the digital era. As we know, Chinese manufacturers mainly focus on products and make profits by ramping up capacity and expanding dealer channels. As the Chinese economy shifts to a lower gear, this type of business model leads to overproduction and market saturation while also failing to meet consumer demand for more personalized products. In the digital era, therefore, traditional manufacturers need to change their business model to transform their business structure. While such a goal may be clear, how to reach it is a different matter. Founded in 2011, SAIC Maxus, a Chinese auto manufacturer, began exploring the C2B (Customer to Business) model in 2016, shifting from a product-centric approach to a user-centric one and from standardized mass production to personalization and smart customization. To this end, it had to adopt a new business model and digitize the entire manufacturing process and supply chain. With no precedent in the market to fall back on, how did SAIC Maxus figure out the C2B model from scratch? How did its C2B model help digitize the traditional value chain of the auto industry? What challenges would the C2B model face in the next step? What lessons does SAIC Maxus' exploration of the C2B model hold for other traditional manufacturing companies?

The case tracks the evolution of FreshWorld, a unique mobile fruit and vegetable vending (FnV) startup in India. It gives a snapshot of the dilemmas faced by the entrepreneur Rajiv Rao during the initial years. This is against the backdrop of the evolving FnV retail domain in India, which is moving from the informal to the formal sector, from roadside vendor and mom and pop stores to organized retail, from technology independence to technology dependence. The case sets the stage for discussing how a startup needs to understand the market, the customer, and the competition. It provides students with an opportunity to examine a startup using the lens of the lean startup methodology. Having surmounted various challenges that were directly related to the way in which FreshWorld was conceived of as a solution; Rao must decide what to do next. He could share his plan and request more funding from his investors. Alternately, he could accept a buyout offer from a leading online retailer. The task before the students is to examine FreshWorld journey and identify where the entrepreneur is in his endeavor? What can he do? How would he decide? This case can be used in a course on entrepreneurship or social entrepreneurship.

The Auction Mobility case covers the founding of, and raising capital for, a new venture in the app industry. Doug Brenhouse and Jeremy Paradise (founders) launch a business to bring auctions to cell phones. Initially, they conceived of a peer-to-peer platform (meaning users would put items up for auctions, targeting other users), but eventually found that an enterprise solution to existing auction houses was a better opportunity. As the company evolves, it goes through multiple rounds of fundraising. As the case closes, Auction Mobility is considering whether to sell the company or keep growing it with a IPO as a future goal.

This case examines the business career of Kuo-Ching Li, who was born in China in 1892, and built a successful minerals trading business called Wah Chang in the United States during the interwar years. He acquired a prominent role in tungsten, the strongest natural metal on earth, and during World War II he played a major role in securing supplies of the strategic mineral from China and Latin America for the United States war effort. The case is set against the background of the era of the Chinese Exclusion Acts between 1882 and 1943 which largely curtailed Chinese immigration to the United States and denied ethnic Chinese citizenship. It explores how Li was able to build his brokerage business in such a setting on the basis of contacts in both China and the United States. It ends with the Communist Revolution in China in 1949 which appeared to threaten his dual identity.

Y Combinator (YC) was a business startup accelerator based in Mountain View, California. Originally founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2005, by 2021, YC listed 2,830 companies amongst its alumni. More than 80% of these companies were still active, had been acquired, or had gone public in June 2021 (see Exhibit 1). By comparison, more than 80% of companies receiving traditional early-stage investment failed within 10 years. In 2021, YC's alumni included 125 companies valued at over $150 million and 25 worth over $1 billion. In total, YC's alumni had a combined valuation of over $300 billion. Its success had attracted many imitators, but YC had continued to innovate its business model over the years and was still the leader in its field. The challenge for Geoff Ralston, President of YC since May 2019, was what to do next to maintain this position. Should YC retain its focus on early-stage funding? Or, should it broaden its product and geographic scope like many of its imitators?

This (C) case provides an update on the work of the Global Coalition for Adaptive Research (GCAR) and also illustrates how adaptive platform trials can nimbly respond to a global pandemic.

Until its highly publicized downfall, Theranos was a so-called unicorn with a compelling proposition to popularize routine blood testing by making it more convenient, using a smaller sample of blood, and testing at a lower cost than conventional, often fear-inducing needles. Holmes and Theranos were reliant on the development of new technology to bring their idea to life. Instead, they became perhaps one of the most infamous examples of failed product innovation. In this article, we contend that although character failings and alleged criminal activity could not have been mitigated realistically, valuable strategic and operational lessons can be learned for future technology startups. By conducting a counterfactual thought experiment and examining Theranos through the lens of Design Innovation (DI), we provide evaluations and predictions across strategic and operational constructs from both an internal and external perspective. We use Theranos to demonstrate the value of DI to future technology-driven entrepreneurs, proposing alternative approaches to medical device startups.

This supplement to Hopax (A), product number 9B10M004, recounts the events that followed until 2008 and explains how the company applied principles of judo strategy to become the second largest supplier of repositionable notes in the world.

This case explains how a researcher, Javier Marcipar, became an entrepreneur by developing a business idea on the outcome of a research project and founded BuildAir, a company of inflatable structures. However, after 7 years of selling magnificent structure to clients of the event sector, BuildAir was still not economically viable. So, Marcipar needed to look for a way to make his startup profitable. Initially, the case focuses on analyzing different alternatives for making BuildAir's business in the event sector viable. Afterwards, the case centers the attention on analyzing the opportunity of selling inflatable hangars in the aeronautical sector and on the development of a suitable business model to make this new business viable. Furthermore, the case delves into the future growth options of BuildAir.

In 2020, just after closing a $34 million Series B financing round, Dave Salvant and Songe LaRon consider how to adjust their business, Squire Technologies, to the new realities posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their barbershop technology, including tools to run a shop and a mobile app for customers was growing swiftly, but with nearly all barbershops shut down to prevent the spread of the disease and no revenue coming in, should they cut back, or take the opportunity to build up?

Fynd is a fast-growing venture that in 7 years since its founding has become India's largest omnichannel retail company with real-time access to over 9,000 stores' offline inventory. It started as a B2B business supporting retailers who didn't have an online business, but pivoted to a B2C platform that allowed customers to shop directly from nearby retail stores through its website and app. Over time, Fynd continued with its B2C platform, scaled up its organization, and added new B2B platforms. But funding this was difficult, with investors raising questions about the business model and growth. In its next phase of growth it sought and failed to receive funding from venture capitalists. In 2018, the founders took a strategic investment from Google. But the subsequent departure of their sponsor from Google meant they needed to look at other avenues for funding. As they were poised for their next phase of growth, the founders were faced with a series of decisions about the pace of scaling, the business model, and how to fund the expansion. In 2019, Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of one of India's largest private conglomerates, and one of their key customers offered to invest $42 million for an 87% stake in the company, and is willing to negotiate terms of the deal. Should the founders accept the offer? What should the terms of the agreement be? How will this impact their business model, their growth trajectory, and also the future of the founders at the firm?

On February 20, 2020, the executive vice-president and chief financial officer of Input Capital Corporation, the first agricultural commodity streaming company in Canada, was reviewing a capital stream contract that one of his associates had prepared for Sustainable Farms Inc. and submitted for his approval. One important consideration was the rate of return expected from the contract and the risks involved. The executive called a co-op student to his office and assigned her the task of calculating the internal rate of return, or effective yield, on this capital stream contract. He also hinted at an alternative way to assess the profitability of the contract, which was to estimate the contract’s mark-to-market value.

In May of 2021, Kevin D. Johnson had just graduated from a rigorous Executive MBA program, and he quickly needed to decide on his next career move. Johnson was the founder and CEO of a successful media company, Johnson Media Inc., but his career goals had shifted while at business school. He wanted to use his talents to help other BIPOC entrepreneurs access capital and provide opportunities to create intergenerational wealth. Johnson evaluated his four options: work full-time at an online platform dedicated to connecting Black founders with funding; join a BIPOC-focused venture capital ("VC") firm; pursue a job at an established VC firm; or continue scaling his media company. Which option would Johnson choose?

Too much competition diminishes motivation and creativity.

Identifying the next big thing is often treated as an exercise in analyzing trends. But that's misleading. By the time a trend is established, any opportunities it presents have probably been captured by competitors. And although a company may need to reflect trends in its business plans, that may mean catching up with rivals rather than gaining a competitive edge. To take advantage of emerging trends, companies must identify them when they are embryonic--not purely speculative, but not yet named or widely known. At that stage the signs will be merely anomalies: weak signals that are in some way surprising but not entirely clear in scope or import. Most anomalies don't become meaningful trends, of course. But some do--and the businesses that identify and interpret them early will steal a march on the competition. The authors present a process for spotting anomalies that have the potential to drive a business, but the process isn't mechanical: Anomaly-driven strategy requires being open to unexpected ideas that may overturn long-held assumptions. Only if you are willing to look at your business from the outside in, question your existing models, and embrace ambiguity will you be able to identify the diamonds hiding in the data.

Popular notions about founders are often wrong, as demonstrated by five new books: "Amazon Unbound," by Brad Stone; "The Cult of We," by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell; "Tencent," by Wu Xiaobo; "Super Founders," by Ali Tamaseb; and "The New Builders," by Seth Levine and Elizabeth MacBride.