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A Day in the Life of a Centure Capitalist
Strebulaev, I; Gouw-Ranzetta, T; Hoyt, DCase SGSB-E444-EEntrepreneurshipThis note describes the tasks that fill the working day of a venture capitalist. Those functions involved in investing (deal sourcing, due diligence, and related tasks) often receive the most attention from students. However, interviews with experienced venture capitalists found that as much or more time is spent working with existing portfolio companies. This note provides insight into each aspect of a venture capitalist’s job: making investm...Starting at €8.20
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Evaluating Venture Capital Term Sheets
Strebulaev, I; Gouw-Ranzetta, T; Hoyt, DCase SGSB-E460-EEntrepreneurshipWhen entrepreneurs are successful in convincing venture capital firms that they are an attractive potential investment, they are presented with offers detailing many terms of the investment agreement. These are described in term sheets. Sorting through the myriad terms can be a daunting proposition for an entrepreneur. Yet, it is important for entrepreneurs to understand the terms of a proposed financing. These determine the payout the entrep...Starting at €8.20
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Community-First Public Safety
Weiss, Mitchell B.; Mehta, SarahCase HBS-821005-EEconomicsHow many police officer positions to fund? In August 2020, the question facing St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, which might have seemed routine to another mayor at another time in another place, was anything but. A pandemic had rendered the city some $19-$34 million short for 2021. Advocates across the country (and nearby) had pointed to a likely pool for budget cuts: police departments. The May 2020 killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in neighbor...Starting at €8.20
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LabCDMX: Experiment 50
Weiss, Mitchell B.; Miguel, Maria FernandaCase HBS-817031-EEntrepreneurshipThere were probably 30,000 public buses, minibuses, and vans in Mexico City. Though, in 2015, no one knew for certain since no comprehensive schedule existed. This was why el Laboratorio para la Ciudad (or LabCDMX) had spawned an effort to generate a map of the labyrinth system that provided an estimated 14 million rides a day. Gabriella G mez-Mont, the Lab's founder and director, had led her team in a project to crowd-source the routes from vol...Starting at €8.20
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U.S. Digital Service
Weiss, Mitchell B.; Sinai, Nick; Norris, MichaelCase HBS-817032-EEntrepreneurshipMikey Dickerson and Haley Van Dyck found themselves far from home and far from certainty about where to take the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) next. In the summer of 2015, they had landed in London to meet with Mike Bracken, director of the United Kingdom's Government Digital Service (GDS). In 2014, President Barack Obama had given USDS a monumental task: transform how the federal government worked for the American people, digitally. The seeds of U...Starting at €8.20
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Testing Autonomy in Pittsburgh (A)
Weiss, Mitchell B.; Urick, BrittanyCase HBS-819059-EEntrepreneurshipPittsburgh's mayor had been among the first to welcome self-driving vehicles, but was now one of many needing to react after a pedestrian fatality involving an autonomous Uber in Arizona. He had originally preferred to roll out "the red carpet" instead of the "red tape". Now he found himself needing to balance technological advancement and the city's economic trajectory against public health and safety concerns and, simply, citizens' fears. Post-...Starting at €8.20
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An (Abbreviated) Perspective on Entrepreneurship
Weiss, Mitchell B.; Henkes, BenjaminCase HBS-820083-EEntrepreneurshipAmong the many competing definitions of entrepreneurship, the one adopted in The Entrepreneurial Manager at HBS was authored by Howard Stevenson in the 1980s and elaborated on in the decades since. Stevenson provided a managerial take on the term; he described entrepreneurship as a distinct approach to management. That approach is the subject of this brief note. The note provides his definition of entrepreneurship ("the pursuit of opportunity wit...Starting at €8.20
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Evaluating Venture Capital Term Sheets - Teaching Note
Strebulaev, I; Gouw-Ranzetta, T; Hoyt, DTeaching Note SGSB-E460TN-EEntrepreneurshipWhen entrepreneurs are successful in convincing venture capital firms that they are an attractive potential investment, they are presented with offers detailing many terms of the investment agreement. These are described in term sheets. Sorting through the myriad terms can be a daunting proposition for an entrepreneur. Yet, it is important for entrepreneurs to understand the terms of a proposed financing. These determine the payout the entrep...Starting at €0.00
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Bigbelly
Weiss, Mitchell B.; Snively, ChristineCase HBS-816005-EEntrepreneurshipTo accelerate Bigbelly's sales growth and its "smart cities" positioning, its CEO planned to shift his company from equipment sales to a subscription service. Jack Kutner hoped to re-position Bigbelly's solar-powered trash compacting stations beyond trash and recycling and use them also to provide public space Wi-Fi, advertising, and urban intelligence sensors. "One year from now we will no longer sell any machines," Kutner planned to tell the co...Starting at €8.20
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The $70K CEO at Gravity Payments
Weiss, Mitchell B.; Norton, Michael I.; Norris, Michael; McAra, SarahCase HBS-816010-ELeadership and People ManagementIn 2015, Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price took a massive pay cut to raise the minimum wage at his company to $70,000 annually. In the wake of a national discussion of wage equality, he was met with cheers and jeers. The company hoped that the buzz from the unorthodox move would generate enough new business to cover the increasing costs of compensation. Did Price make the right move? Would Gravity thrive or even survive?Starting at €8.20