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This case describes the development of ALLVP, a Mexico-based venture capital firm, from founding to Fund III. It discusses how Federico Antoni and Fernando Lelo de Larrea, ALLVP's founders, positioned the firm to address unmet funding needs in Mexico's nascent entrepreneurial market. The case also examines venture capital more broadly throughout Latin America, including the dominance of VC in Brazil, international investment, and structural barriers to exits.

The owner of Manipal Power Laundry asked his nephew, an MBA student, for advice on the business. The company's operational inefficiencies had led to high operating costs over time. Coupled with regulatory price caps, the situation made the business unsustainable. The owner asked his nephew to provide a solution that would benefit the company both in the short term and over the long term. After observing the various processes, collecting data, and interviewing employees, the nephew decided to use process flow analysis to help the company optimize its operations.

The co-manager and partner at Escape Outdoors (EO), North Sydney, Nova Scotia had to decide if the adoption of Herschel Supply Co. (Herschel) products—as part of her outdoor store’s product mix—was a good decision for her company. Herschel had never been included in the traditional outdoor mix of brands, and EO’s market was an older clientele than Herschel’s. Marketing factors affecting her decision to adopt a new brand included buyer behaviour, marketing informatics, segmentation, differentiation, and positioning. However, Herschel was a post-millennial-focused brand, and the company’s representative believed the younger demographic was becoming more interested in outdoor recreation. EO’s co-manager and partner had concerns. Did Herschel fit EO’s values, current brand mix, and customer base? Should EO adopt the brand? Which specific lines or products would be the best fit? How much inventory should EO begin with?

This case describes 23andMe CEO and cofounder Anne Wojcicki's founding story and her recent attempts to scale the company's direct-to-consumer genetic testing franchise while simultaneously expanding its pharmaceutical development aspirations.

With long development timelines and high risk, new energy technologies were often left to languish in the "valley of death," unable to raise enough funds to bring a product to market. In 2014, Sarah Kearney founded the nonprofit Prime Coalition to solve this problem. At the beginning, Prime's role as a financial intermediary involved seeking out the most promising market-based technology solutions to climate change and recruiting foundations or philanthropists to fund them. In 2019, Prime changed course, adopting a portfolio approach with its Prime Impact Fund. By the end of the year, Prime had raised $40 million in philanthropic capital for its new fund. Once the funds were invested in promising energy startups, Prime planned to try its hand at recruiting traditional investors to back the same companies. Could Kearney convince traditional investors that these investments were worth the risks?

Clayton M. Christensen's Theory of Disruptive Innovation has had an undeniable impact in business over the past two decades. In this Q&A with longtime collaborator Karen Dillon, he discussed the impact of disruption in today's tech-centric world and why theory is still such a powerful tool for decision-making, even as it continues to evolve.

In mid-2019, the owner of Ireland Renovations was contemplating the future of his renovation and construction company that operated in London and Middlesex County in Ontario, Canada. The owner’s youngest son was interested in working for the business, but the owner wondered whether the company could afford to hire him. His son had previously worked for the company part-time and had shown an interest in helping his father grow the business. The owner decided to project and analyze cash budgets for fiscal years 2020 and 2021 to determine whether hiring his son would be a feasible option.

This case study describes Mark Lund's journey in starting and growing two different businesses. The businesses are set in Brazil. The time period of the businesses span two decades, the 1980s and 90s. Mark is firstly a surfer, musician and philosopher. Yet, he had an uncanny ability to identify business opportunities, develop and shape these opportunities and to capture opportunities.

The main purpose of the Venus Medtech case is to give students a greater appreciation for the scale, sophistication, and competitiveness of the innovation landscape outside of Silicon Valley, with particular focus on China. Through a dramatized account of the June 2013 Series A fundraising experience of Venus Medtech, a Chinese medical device start-up, the case forms the basis of a rich, in-class discussion about the similarities and differences between the entrepreneurship and venture capital ecosystems in China and the U.S. Considerable attention is given in the case to the factors that influence a Chinese entrepreneur's decision to build a business and raise capital at home or abroad. The case also compares and contrasts the business practices of VC investors in China and the U.S., as well as the types of deal terms that they typically seek from start-ups.

Student spreadsheet to case W20075

In December 2018, Boom Technology Inc., a start-up based in Colorado, United States, was hoping to enter the aviation market with a supersonic aircraft. The company’s founder and chief executive officer believed that customers would pay a premium for a flight that could get them to their destination in less than half the time compared to current options.<br><br>Developing meaningful relationships within this complex web of stakeholders, including large and powerful traditional aircraft makers, regulators, airlines, and end customers, was one of the biggest challenges. In addition, two other start-ups had similar aims and were also developing relationships and alliances with different businesses in the sector.<br><br>The company’s founder was contemplating several key business decisions. Was supersonic flight a technologically possible and economically viable form of transport? How could the company convince airlines to buy the supersonic aircraft? Was building a supersonic private business jet a safer bet?

Boston-based Project Have Hope was a non-profit social enterprise promoting financial stability for 100 women in Kampala, Uganda, who had been displaced as a result of Uganda’s civil war. Established in 2006, Project Have Hope used revenue from the sale of paper bead jewellery and other products made by the women to provide training, loans, and children’s tuition. The project faced many challenges over the years, including an unplanned expansion of its beneficiaries, staffing challenges, an oversaturated bead jewellery market, rising costs, and the founder’s unsustainable workload. In 2019, Project Have Hope was at a nexus: how could the founder sustain Project Have Hope into the future?

Blake Vince is a fifth-generation farmer who adheres to seemingly unconventional farming techniques. Most farmers in southwestern Ontario use conventional industrial farming methods such as tilling their fields, relying on pesticides and fertilizers, and monocropping (i.e., planting the same crops on the same plot of land year after year). Vince, however, embraces more regenerative agricultural practices (such as no-till farming, wherein the top layer of soil is left undisturbed), planting cover crops, and reducing his application of chemical inputs. He uses a variety of cover crops between seasons of soybean crops to help enhance soil quality. This method of farming has been demonstrated to be more ecologically aligned, sustainable, and less costly in the long run, both economically and environmentally. However, Vince estimates that the savings come at the expense of crop yields during the first four to five years. Debates over farming practices (e.g., till versus no-till) were strong in Ontario. Farmers cared passionately about their land, and they often held strong opinions of their preferred approach, passed down through generations. Vince faces the challenge of spreading the word about regenerative agricultural practices and convincing farmers of the importance of operating as long-term stewards to preserve the land for future generations. Vince wondered whether the arguments for regenerative agricultural practices would be strong enough to persuade (a) farmers to shift their practices, (b) consumers to shift their purchasing, and (c) political leaders to introduce policies to accelerate its adoption.

On March 25, 2019, the head of business growth for SmartMoney, owned by the Indian conglomerate Smart Industries Limited, was expected by his company’s management team to propose a strategy for capturing 10 per cent of India’s digital payments market in financial year 2019–20. He knew that the market was vast and fragmented and that he was working with a platform business, where fast mobilization was a key factor. SmartMoney already had market presence, resources, and the required expertise to be competitive on the merchant side of the industry over the long term. Therefore, the immediate and considerable challenge was how to mobilize the consumer side, where the company faced various well-established and aggressive incumbents. To thoroughly asses the market, the head of business growth had to integrate a great deal of available information. He would need to select the right entry strategy and target a consumer segment, offering appropriate incentive schemes to attract business. His challenge was to devise a strategy and build a stable, substantial customer base that would deliver the desired results to sustain long-term growth for both SmartMoney and its parent company.

Algorithmic networking startup Lunchclub coordinates in-person meetings between professionals who would have been unlikely to meet. The company faces marketplace design, growth, and monetization challenges: The executive team has to refine Lunchclub's marketplace strategy, and determine whether the company should continue to focus on its current use cases and geographical hubs or expand the platform's scale and scope. And while Lunchclub unlocks significant value by brokering new connections, the team still has to identify whom to charge and how.

Nova Pioneer was a private school system in South Africa and Kenya that offered preschool through secondary education for students ranging in age from 3 to 19. The earliest of Nova Pioneer's precursors was Pioneer Academies, founded in South Africa by Chinezi Chijioke in 2013. Pioneer was started to offer the affordable, quality education needed to develop Africa's next generation of leaders and innovators. In 2015, Pioneer Academies merged with Nova Academies, a newer school in Kenya founded by a team of experienced education entrepreneurs, creating Nova Pioneer. This case covers the next set of expansion plans for Nova Pioneer - to expand into additional countries and fulfill Nova Pioneer's vision of becoming a pan-African school system.

This case provides an overview of the founding and scaling story of British health and wellness company Clinova. The case outlines the fledgling company's early marketing successes signing up-and-coming athletes and sports franchises, as well as the difficult capital allocation, strategic and structural decisions Clinova's founders Arsalan Karim and Charles Ebubedike must make between scaling their consumer product lines or building their illness diagnosis mobile application.

Ballard Power Systems Inc. (Ballard), a Canadian disruptor in the clean energy sector, developed and produced hydrogen-powered fuel cells. The company had been revolutionary, but after many years in business the company was still research-oriented and doing more demonstration projects than selling fuel cells to customers. Revenues and stocks were sagging and employees, many of whom had been with the company for years, were disaffected. The energy company with a proud history of being a disruptor was, itself, at risk of being disrupted. The job of the new chief executive officer (CEO) was to motivate the staff and create in them a disruptive mindset that would carry the company forward into a new customer-focused future. There was an entrenched belief that Ballard was skilled at developing good ideas and that new technology needed to give way to the new ethos of being a customer-centred, disruptive, problem-solving organization. How could the CEO embed the changes and ensure the new values drove Ballard’s growth?

In May 2016, three scientists from Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology were preparing for a meeting with several managers from the institute's technology transfer department. The three scientists were planning to commercialize a new technology they had created, and hoped to use their invention to launch a new company as a spinoff from their work at the institute. However, because the scientists had created the technology while working at the institute, the technology was legally owned by the institute. The focus of their meeting with the institute's management was (1) to plan for the protection of their invention by registering relevant patents and (2) to discuss the terms for a suitable agreement between both parties. The scientists wanted to clarify how they might be able to use the technology to launch their spinoff company. Specifically, they were eager to determine their rights to the patents that would be registered for their intellectual property. They hoped the meeting would clarify any conflicts between the interests of the scientists and those of the university, and would determine the party responsible for costs related to protecting the intellectual property.

This case describes the evolution of the customer success function through the rise of Gainsight. It discusses the responsibilities of the customer success function, measuring and compensating customer success teams, and the return on investment for adding a customer success organization. It also describes some of the different forms customer success can take across firms.