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Entrepreneurs often struggle with the question of whether to found solo or alongside one or more cofounders. This case is comprised of three vignettes detailing common founding scenarios: the first-time technical founder; the serial commercial founder; and the MBA co-founders who are friends first. Coupled with robust research, this case offers students the opportunity to break down the roles, responsibilities, relationships, and resources of a founding team and determine when and why they should found alone or seek a cofounder.

Inter IKEA Systems B.V. (IKEA) entered Korea at a relatively late stage of its global expansion and encountered an overwhelmingly positive customer response, which emboldened it to open several additional stores at a relatively fast pace. However, IKEA encountered much stronger headwinds after the COVID-19 pandemic hit Korea. It had to shift to online sales channels, mitigate customer dissatisfaction, face aggressive Korean competitors, accommodate a major slump in furniture demand, and address employee dissatisfaction and strong demands from its labour union. What could the company do to address these challenges and renew its success?

In November 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried's multi-billion-dollar crypto exchange, FTX, collapsed, wiping out investors and throwing the crypto industry into disarray. As FTX's founder and CEO, Bankman-Fried developed a reputation for his unerring business sense and high-profile charitable giving. To many, it came as a shock when in the wake of FTX's collapse, the attorney responsible for restructuring the company professed he had never seen "such an utter failure of corporate controls at every level of an organization." How had Bankman-Fried managed to hide his malfeasance so well, and for so long? The investigation also raised questions about the people and organizations that enabled Bankman-Fried's wrongdoing. What should regulators have done differently? Were the VC funds that bankrolled FTX partly responsible?

In January 2022, superstar-athlete-turned-entrepreneur David Beckham is deciding on a proposal that has the potential to significantly change the trajectory of his business career: Authentic Brands Group ('Authentic') has offered to engage in a strategic partnership that will see that company co-own and manage Beckham's brand and Beckham become a shareholder in Authentic. The proposed deal will yield a significant payment for Beckham in exchange for a 55% stake in his company, David Beckham Ventures. But as he will no longer own a majority stake in his commercial activities, it will also come with a handover of majority control. Is a joint venture with Authentic the right move for David Beckham and his team?

In June 2023, David Beckham, co-owner of Major League Soccer team Inter Miami CF, is hoping to find a way to bring Lionel Messi, widely regarded as one of the best players the world of soccer has ever seen, to his team. But Messi-a seven-time winner of the Ballon d'Or and fresh off a fairy-tale-like FIFA World Cup victory with the Argentine national team-is in high demand, and Inter Miami do not have the means to enter a bidding war, so Beckham and his partners will have to be creative. They have been working on an offer for Messi that involves a deal that runs until the winter of 2025, is worth between $20 million and $25 million in salary (including bonuses and other incentives), and that offers him an equity stake in Inter Miami after his retirement from professional soccer. Will the offer he and his partners have been preparing be sufficient to make Messi choose Miami?

magicpin was a multisided platform that enabled users to discover online and offline offers from merchants and brands through the magicpin app, and to earn rewards and cashback. magicpin facilitated an increase in the sales of partner merchants and brands by diverting consumer traffic, and was paid by the merchants and brands if performance guarantees on an increase in sales were achieved. In its "mission to make hyperlocal magical," magicpin introduced a "phygital" service that enabled users to browse online offers from local offline merchants, check the availability of the merchandise in nearby stores, pay using magicpoints, and pick up the product from the store or have it delivered home. As the company sought to attract users that valued the shopping experience rather than deals, Anshoo Sharma, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of magicpin, was considering releasing a "manifesto" that explained the distinctiveness of magicpin's offering and reinforced its mission.

As he prepares for a 2023 meeting of General Electric Corp. (GE), Vladimiro de la Mora, president of GE Mexico, weighs the potential benefits and risks of nearshoring production to the Mexican border. Along with major ports that accessed both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and a 2,000-mile frontier shared with the United States, Mexico has a long history of trade and cooperation with the United States, supported by trade agreements and low labor costs, that have attracted low-skilled US manufacturing to Mexico for decades. But nearshoring is not without risks. Mexico has high inequality and low levels of human capital, and it is susceptible to political crises, populism, corruption, and insecurity, causing acute problems along the border with the United States. Reforms are needed. This public-sourced, partially fictionalized case offers an overview of Mexico's economic and political history since the 1970s, putting into rich context the opportunities and challenges encountered by a multinational company in 2023. It is taught at Darden in the second half of the Global Economics and Markets (GEM) sequence; it would also be suitable in a module covering long-run potential growth, economic fragilities, and economic crises.

This case and video supplement recount three high-profile public health decisions that German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, made during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: how to procure masks, which vaccines to procure (and how many doses), and whether to pause AstraZeneca vaccine distribution after preliminary evidence linked it to a rare lethal side effect. These inflection points called on Spahn to evaluate tough tradeoffs and rapidly execute a series of high-stakes decisions with limited information, and under intense public scrutiny. In April of 2020, amid a global scramble for coveted N95 face masks and a wildly fluctuating market, Spahn procured millions of masks for German health care workers at the high cost of 4.50 Euros each. The decision garnered bad press just a few weeks later as supply chains relaxed, and mask prices plummeted. The following month, Spahn led Germany to secure contracts with as many vaccine manufacturers as possible and spearheaded a push for the European Union to negotiate vaccine procurement as a unified bloc. To achieve this, Germany had to assume a greater share of the purchasing risk than other EU countries and purchased significantly more vaccine doses than they would have otherwise. Then in March 2021, having received preliminary evidence that the AstraZeneca vaccine was linked to a rare but potentially fatal side effect, Spahn paused distribution of AstraZeneca in Germany. This case includes a 14:38 video supplement in which Jens Spahn revisits his approach to these key decisions, the factors that influenced his thinking and some of the lessons learned. HKS Case No. 2269.0

As a gaming company that was neither energy nor emissions-intensive, 37 Interactive Entertainment developed a range of measures to reduce its carbon emissions over several years. These included establishing an industry-leading method for calculating the company's carbon footprint, committing to become carbon neutral, purchasing renewable energy, and developing games with environmental themes. Company executives, including cofounder and Vice Chairman, Zeng Kaitian, were committed to finding more ways to ensure the company lived up to its environmental responsibilities, especially by leveraging its advantages as a gaming company to influence society. Zeng also held discussions with the board's Sustainable Development Working Group on integrating social responsibilities into the company's strategy and day-to-day operations.

Icahn Enterprises, a publicly traded limited partnership founded and operated by famed activist investor Carl Icahn, had earned above market returns for over a decade. Between 2018 and early 2023, it had a compound annual return of 31%. Icahn invested in undervalued companies and then publicly pressured boards of directors to make changes to increase the share price. Hindenburg Research (Hindenburg), an activist short-selling investment firm founded by Nathan Anderson, took short positions in companies it felt were overvalued, published research reports to drive down the stock price, and then profit from the decline. In May 2023, Hindenburg published a report claiming that Icahn Enterprises stock price was overvalued by 75%, that its 15% dividend yield was not sustainable, and that it sustained itself through a Ponzi-like economic model by issuing new stock to new investors so it could pay dividends to existing investors. Would Icahn Enterprises continue to outperform the market or was it a Ponzi disaster waiting to happen?

In 2019, TetraScience CEO "Spin" Wang needed advice. Five years earlier, he had cofounded a startup that saw early success with a hardware product designed to help laboratory scientists in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical spaces more easily collect data from various instruments. At the time, longtime technology CEO Patrick Grady warned the cofounders that the growth was illusory, and that they should think about how to better structure their business and to start anew thinking about design in four facets-category, product, organization, and ecosystem. Paying attention to these "first principles," Grady believed, would lead TetraScience to pivot away from its initial hardware business and into a new cloud-based service. The cofounders had rejected Grady's advice at first, but in 2019, with the company facing bankruptcy, Wang called him up again to talk strategy.

A.P. Moller-Maersk (MAERSK), an integrated container logistics company based in Copenhagen, Denmark, has been on a decade long strategic transformation journey that was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. MAERSK's ambitious strategic business transformation converted the organization from an unwieldy family-owned conglomerate to an integrated container and logistics company. This massive shift required new organizational capabilities, new leadership, and most importantly, a significant change in company culture. The transformation helped make MAERSK successful both from a business perspective (e.g., digital transformation, mergers, acquisitions) and from a culture transformation perspective. The company took appropriate steps to break away from a traditional culture without jeopardizing its core values. From a change management perspective, MAERSK's 9,000 people managers evolved from "a victim mindset" within "a cycle of despair" to a "growth mindset" within "a cycle of hope." However, the company faced several key questions about its future: "Why did it implement strategic change in the first place? What are the benefits of strategic transformation? Was the company's transformation successful? What comes next? What challenges will it face in its consistent drive to be better?

The Beijing Stars and Rain Education Institute for Autism (Stars and Rain) was established in 1993 as the first private non-profit organization to provide educational services for children with autism in China. As a social enterprise, Stars and Rain worked to connect with various partners, raise funds through multiple channels, and co-operate with social welfare organizations. In addition to providing better autism rehabilitation services, it was also dedicated to facilitating family intervention and pre-employment training for adolescents with autism through its professional service and social influence. Since 2020, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic had led to a continued downturn in the global economy, which greatly affected Stars and Rain's operations and funding. How could the organization obtain a more stable source of funding, achieve sustained viability, and execute on its mission, vision, and strategic priorities?

Led by iconoclastic founder and chief executive officer Torstein Hagen, Viking River Cruises, Inc. (Viking) had revolutionized river cruising and established a leading market share in that segment of the cruise travel industry. In 2022, the firm chose to enter the fast-growing expedition segment of the industry with two newly constructed ships. It faced a critical strategic question: could Viking's proven formula in river and ocean cruising convey a competitive advantage in the expedition segment as well? Viking had to decide how to position itself in this segment and whether to scale up quickly in advance of projected demand growth.

In June 2022, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Worn Again Technologies (Worn Again), a polymer recycling technology company based in London, United Kingdom, was examining the way forward with a new technology that the company had developed and fine-tuned. The technology had been tested successfully at the company's demonstration plant in Switzerland and was capable of processing fifty thousand tons of material per year. The CEO now needed to find new markets where the technology could be set up and scaled for commercialization.

The case revolves around an entrepreneur, Maggie Fleur, who manages several businesses on her family's farm and who is considering a complementary new business in the burgeoning industry of human composting. The case includes background on the death-care market in the United States in addition to how human composting (which was legal in five US states as of spring 2023) works. It explores the industry leader, private company Recompose, providing details about company history, fundraising, and basic financials.

The CEO of Revier Cattle Company, Tom Revier, had been an innovator in sustainable farming and humane livestock practices for over two decades. He and his partner Paul Hillen are considering whether they should launch a branded differentiated product in the market, and if so, how they should position this offering. The product has definite advantages in taste, texture and consistency due to the consistent farming techniques. Although taste may be important for some segments of the market, there may be an opportunity to showcase the sustainability characteristics of the company's livestock care and handling and its humane and environmentally friendly aspects. The case delves into the end-to-end value chain to understand the opportunities and challenges in taking a brand to market.

In 2020, Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, co-founders and co-CEO's of the fintech company Brex, needed to determine how to balance their vision with the desires of their investors. They intended to expand Brex's offerings to include other products that served the financial needs of their startup, but some of their investors believed the focus should be on improving existing features to meet customer base needs. While Dubugras and Franceschi oversaw development of existing products and considered new ones, they were also trying to raise a Series D round from the same investors who voiced concerns on expansion. How should they balance their vision of a one-stop financial shop for businesses, with the investors' desire to be cautious and offer features to keep up with the competition?