Stanford Graduate School of Business (USA)
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Glassdoor: The Fundraising Journey (A)
Siegel, Robert; Orleans, AmadeusCase SGSB-E673A-EEntrepreneurshipFrom his time as a young engineer at Microsoft in 1993, to the challenge of building Glassdoor from the ground up until it reached a valuation of over $1 billion, in 2018, Robert Hohman had come a long way. Now, from his spacious office with a picturesque view of Richardson Bay in Mill Valley, California, Hohman confronted one of the most important decisions of his life. Glassdoor, the company he cofounded in 2007 with Rich Barton and Tim Besse,...Starting at €8.20
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Weddington Way
Ellis, J; Randolph, JCase SGSB-E455-EEntrepreneurshipThe case profiles the protagonist, Ilana Stern, founder of Weddington Way—a wedding-related e-commerce site—during the company’s early formation stage. The case begins with an introduction of Stern’s professional background and a portrayal of Stern’s summer between her first and second years at business school, during which the idea and vision for Weddington Way took shape. The case then follows Stern as she digs deeper into the viability of th...Starting at €8.20
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FINDMINE: Looking for a Break
Chess, Robert; Orleans, AmadeusCase SGSB-E672-EEntrepreneurshipFrom quitting a stable post-MBA job and starting FINDMINE, a start-up in the retail technology space, to finally negotiating venture capital investment offers, Michelle Bacharach—and FINDMINE—had come a long way. Two years of uncertainty with virtually no outside capital raised, a pivot from B2C to B2B, two accelerator programs, and numerous meetings with potential investors and customers had made her an entrepreneur who was comfortable with dif...Starting at €8.20
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Glassdoor: The Fundraising Journey (B)
Siegel, Robert; Orleans, AmadeusCase SGSB-E673B-EEntrepreneurshipFrom his time as a young engineer at Microsoft in 1993, to the challenge of building Glassdoor from the ground up until it reached a valuation of over $1 billion, in 2018, Robert Hohman had come a long way. Now, from his spacious office with a picturesque view of Richardson Bay in Mill Valley, California, Hohman confronted one of the most important decisions of his life. Glassdoor, the company he cofounded in 2007 with Rich Barton and Tim Besse,...Starting at €5.74
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NewView Capital: Portfolio Acquisitions and Operational Support
Beyer, Anne; Siegel, Robert; Orleans, AmadeusCase SGSB-E793-EEntrepreneurshipIn 2018, renowned venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA) faced challenges related to the rapid multiplication of its funds and growth of its portfolio. Ravi Viswanathan, then a General Partner and the Chief Operating Officer of the firm, identified an opportunity to start a new venture firm to acquire a subset of NEA’s portfolio companies through a secondary stock transaction. The strategy seemed beneficial for NEA, its Limited Part...Starting at €8.20
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Lynn Garcia
Ellis, JCase SGSB-E540-EEntrepreneurshipThe fictitious Lynn Garcia case examines several managerial challenges faced by first-time CEO Lynn Garcia. After graduating from Stanford’s GSB, Garcia founded eChange, a self-service coin-counting company that enabled users to convert coins into other forms of currency. As Garcia grew the company, she encountered a variety of difficult situations. Each of the five vignettes highlighted in the case can be solved through a variety of approache...Starting at €8.20
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Stride: The Early Sales Decisions
Speiser, Michael; Orleans, AmadeusCase SGSB-E647-EEntrepreneurshipStride was founded in April 2016 and offered a software that gathered data from disparate sources and organized such data in one platform with a simple interface, with the goal of enabling marketing teams to more easily develop and launch personalized marketing campaigns. Elise Bergeron, the start-up’s cofounder and Chief Operating Officer, had been confronted with multiple difficult decisions since the early days of the company. Some of the most...Starting at €8.20
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Andrea Jung: The Challenge of Letting Go
Dobson, David; Orleans, AmadeusCase SGSB-E648-EEntrepreneurshipAndrea Jung became CEO of Avon Products Inc. in 1999 - the first woman to ever hold the position since the foundation of the iconic cosmetics company, in 1886. In a few years at the helm, Jung tripled the company’s profits, modernized its culture and was elected one of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” by Forbes. By 2005, however, Avon had become bloated with too many hierarchical layers and profits came up flat for the first time in five yea...Starting at €8.20
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Cerebras: A Tale of Dreams and Risks
Leslie, Mark; Orleans, AmadeusCase SGSB-E671-EEntrepreneurshipAfter selling SeaMicro, Inc. to AMD, in 2012, Andrew Feldman started a process he called “lightly sifting”, trying to stay updated on the ideas and businesses being built in Silicon Valley. Eventually, he started spending more and more time with four of his former colleagues from SeaMicro: Gary Lauterbach, Michael James, J.P. Fricker, and Sean Lie. The casual conversations quickly evolved to regular ideation sessions in which the group discussed ...Starting at €8.20
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Floodgate: An Entrepreneurials VC
Ziebelman, Peter; Orleans, AmadeusCase SGSB-E644-EEntrepreneurshipMike Maples Jr. founded the micro-VC firm Floodgate in 2006, after a successful career as an entrepreneur with two startup IPOs under his belt. At the time, he had identified a group of overlooked founders in Silicon Valley: those who wanted to raise only $1 million or less, a growing group since costs involved in launching a company had been declining significantly as a result of technological advancements and innovative management approach, suc...Starting at €8.20