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This workshop allows students follow a modified version of Google Venture's Brand Sprint to build a startup brand from scratch. Details on the elements of a brand are discussed, including defining the values and personality of the venture, as well as developing a clear voice and visual representation. The exercise emphasizes the importance of crafting a brand that aligns with the company's purpose, resonates with the target audience, and differentiates the venture from competitors.

This case details the challenges faced by Marc Jones as the CEO of Aeris Communications (Aeris), a privately owned software company that provided Internet of Things (IoT) networks and services to automotive, fleet, and health care customers. In the case, Jones leads Aeris through a major industry transformation and considers how best to drive continued innovation and growth while navigating increasingly complicated "coopetition" with customers and partners as a result of Aeris's place in the technology stack.

In December 2018, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Carrot Rewards (Carrot), a profitable Canadian social enterprise, was facing a turning point. The company, which had been founded three years earlier, was about to implode. Its single largest client had just conveyed its decision to pull out, causing a sudden 65 per cent drop in the company's annual revenue. Should Carrot continue with the prevailing model-one day at a time? Should it launch a freemium version of its app? Should it pivot toward new geographies and new locations? Should it begin to focus on new verticals and go after new clients? Should it go on the auction block and salvage what is left of the original company? The founder and CEO wondered whether the future held workable options other than those he was considering in dealing with the enterprise he had founded, built, and nurtured.

In December 2018, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Carrot Rewards (Carrot), a profitable Canadian social enterprise, was facing a turning point. The company, which had been founded three years earlier, was about to implode. Its single largest client had just conveyed its decision to pull out, causing a sudden 65 per cent drop in the company’s annual revenue. Should Carrot continue with the prevailing model—one day at a time? Should it launch a freemium version of its app? Should it pivot toward new geographies and new locations? Should it begin to focus on new verticals and go after new clients? Should it go on the auction block and salvage what is left of the original company? The founder and CEO wondered whether the future held workable options other than those he was considering in dealing with the enterprise he had founded, built, and nurtured.

Praesens Care, a start-up based in Belgium, has developed a mobile laboratory with the aim of safely testing people for a wide range of killer diseases. Its mobile laboratories enable monitoring of infectious diseases and improve diagnostic capabilities in remote areas in Africa. The case tells the story from its origins to the difficulties encountered in the public health sector, with three questions at the core: what and who are its targets, how to align its operations to achieve them, and how to finance its operations.

Praesens Care, a start-up based in Belgium, has developed a mobile laboratory with the aim of safely testing people for a wide range of killer diseases. Its mobile laboratories enable monitoring of infectious diseases and improve diagnostic capabilities in remote areas in Africa. The case tells the story from its origins to the difficulties encountered in the public health sector, with three questions at the core: what and who are its targets, how to align its operations to achieve them, and how to finance its operations.

Realizing in early 2021 that their pending real estate investment fund would likely be oversubscribed, Drake Real Estate Partners co-founders Nicolás Ibáñez and David Cotterman were considering how best to continue to diversify their investor base and how to optimize operational efficiency as they deployed increasing amounts of capital. Although his family office had funded the company's first fund, Ibáñez added Latin American family investors and some institutions to subsequent funds while Cotterman focused on delivering 20+% returns. As they looked ahead to their fourth fund and beyond, the partners needed to decide how best to develop their firm and their offerings as they worked to attract capital without alienating either their smart-money family investors or their nascent institutional clientele.

In July 2020, Ruben Flores-Martinez had launched a startup, CashDrop, which provided easy and cheap sales options for small businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic helped CashDrop quickly grow. Flores-Martinez, who had previously sought and been denied venture capital funding, suddenly found CashDrop being pursued by venture capital. The case discusses Flores-Martinez's background as an undocumented immigrant in the United States, his previous business ventures, and his concerns about the influence of venture capital on business. The case also discusses the American and global payment platform landscape.

After the events in CashDrop A, Flores-Martinez received two concrete offers from VC funds for his startup business, CashDrop. This case describes the tensions between the two funds: a traditional VC fund who would offer Flores-Martinez a prestigious platform, and a newer VC that focused on funding more diverse companies. The case asks which Flores-Martinez should choose.

After the events in CashDrop A, Jarrid Tingle and Henri Pierre-Jacques, the founders of Harlem Capital partners, worried that Ruben Flores-Martinez, CashDrop's founder, would take another offer while he waited for them to officially make an offer. HCP traditionally took more time to vet their potential investments, but Tingle and Pierre-Jacques did not want Flores-Martinez to pick another VC while he waited. The case asks if they should adjust their terms to be more competitive.

In November 2020, the co-founders of DigiPlex study the future growth trajectory of their Nordic data center venture. A critical question was on the agenda: was now finally the right time to sell DigiPlex? Originally a $2.75 million investment in one small data center made in the wake of the dot-com bubble, the Norwegian-based firm had seen tremendous growth in the last two decades. DigiPlex was now worth over a billion dollars and comprised seven data centers across Scandinavia, offering high-speed connectivity powered by sustainable hydro-electric energy.

On September 10, 2001, after speaking at an industry conference at New York's World Trade Center, Hotwire co-founder Spencer Rascoff boarded a flight from Newark to San Francisco. After returning home, Rascoff awoke the next morning to a phone call informing him that the same numbered flight from Newark he had boarded the day before had been hijacked and crashed into one of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers. That same morning, Rascoff's co-founder and Hotwire CEO Karl Peterson was about to give the keynote speech at a travel conference in New Orleans. Peterson saw the second plane hit the towers on the hotel's lobby television. With all commercial flights in the U.S. and Canada grounded for three days after the attacks, 15,000 Hotwire customers were stranded away from home. In the weeks that followed, customers demanded refunds for cancelled flights, and new flight bookings plummeted as Americans lost faith in the safety of air travel. To make matters worse, Hotwire's founders learned from the FBI that some of the 9/11 hijackers had purchased their flights on Hotwire.com. While 9/11 took an emotional toll on all Americans, the travel industry faced the additional burden of intense financial pressure. Hotwire's leadership team needed to make immediate and hard decisions to stem cash outflow and determine where, when, and how to let employees go, while trying to maintain morale. The business required a new capital raise on terms that would be acceptable to existing investors. And, while facing trade-offs in the use of Hotwire's scarce resources, the team needed to position the business for future growth amid a field of well-funded competitors.

Mentorship from other experienced individuals has become essential to entrepreneurs and their fledgling ventures, particularly in today's accelerators. However, even with the acknowledgment that mentoring and coaching improve an entrepreneur's likelihood of success, we know very little about the nuances of mentor-mentee relationships or the individual characteristics important to an entrepreneur's coachability. Therefore, we examined mentors and founders across entrepreneurial support organizations to investigate the factors that influence an entrepreneur's coachability, how coachability translates to venture outcomes, and whether or not the mentor-mentee relationship met the entrepreneur's expectations. We found that entrepreneurs that are more coachable are ultimately more successful during their time in these programs and are more satisfied with their mentorship experience. This article provides insights for the leaders of accelerators to improve mentorship opportunities and suggestions for entrepreneurs to improve their coachability.

David Swensen and the Investments Office staff must decide whether to continue to allocate the bulk of the university's endowment to illiquid investments-hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, real estate, natural resources-given the impact of the COVID-19 public health crisis on the financial markets. The case explores the risks and benefits of a different asset allocation strategy and considers how to create financial models to prepare for unexpected events. It highlights the issues around allocations across different subclasses, e.g., between venture capital, hedge funds, and real assets.

This case follows the story of Suelin Chen in her career as the founder of Cake, a digital platform that provided "one-stop access" to a wide range of advance care and end-of-life planning products and services. The case highlights the societal, technological, and cultural trends that led to innovation in end-of-life planning. Chen debates which users to target and whether to utilize a B2B or B2C business model to do so.

This case is set in November 2020. Lao Hung Jia (LHJ) was a progressive chicken rice hawker stall that had embraced digital transformation and open innovation from e-retailing, e-payment, e-distribution to e-marketing. Even though these digital transformation initiatives had helped LHJ improve its customer service, productivity had remained an issue, especially when 50 percent of a hawker's work was spent on food preparation. CK Ng, the son of the founder of LHJ, reached out to the Food Innovation and Resource Centre (FIRC) at Singapore Polytechnic to conduct R&D to develop pre-mixed and pre-packaged sauces so that cooking chicken rice could be simplified. When the R&D at the FIRC was completed, Ng went to Sin Hwa Dee, a local sauce and paste manufacturer, to further develop and batch manufacture these three sauces, namely, the chicken stock, soya sauce and chilli sauce. Sin Hwa Dee was able to replicate the chicken stock and soya sauce, but it could not do so with the chilli sauce as the food retort production method used had altered the taste, colour and texture of the chilli sauce. Ng did not want LHJ to remain as a single chicken rice hawker stall. He had envisioned a LHJ franchise and dreamed about serving LHJ's chicken rice in vending machines or unmanned stalls so that more people in Singapore and abroad could savour the dish. But all these plans were dependent on getting the pre-mixed and pre-packaged chilli sauce right - without it, many Singaporeans would agree that the chicken rice was 'incomplete'. What should Ng do to make his dreams for LHJ a reality?

This case follows Jason Wright and Umang Kajaria at Apax Partners as they consider an investment in Duck Creek Technologies, a technology provider for property & casualty insurance companies. The deal required a complex carve-out from Accenture, Duck Creek's parent organization, and several operational improvements to rejuvenate the company. The case provides the opportunity to evaluate the deal's investment thesis, structure, and risks, along with calculating Duck Creek's valuation.