Stanford Graduate School of Business (USA)
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A Note on Getting the Most Out of Your Board Meetings
Dodson, D; Pohlmeyer, SCase SGSB-E631-EEntrepreneurshipIn your first year as chief executive officer (CEO), you will encounter a host of management challenges and opportunities—all of which can be navigated more skillfully if you can tap into the insights and perspectives of a handful of seasoned operators and investors. For this reason, your board can have a significant impact on the company’s performance. Unfortunately, CEOs often get far less value out of their boards in the first few years than...Starting at €8.20
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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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Branch Metrics: "Failing" into the Idea
Mandelbaum, F; Pohlmeyer, SCase SGSB-E586-EEntrepreneurshipThis case explores the Branch Metrics’ cofounders’ early days as a team and their pursuit of a viable idea for their startup. The three original cofounders, who met in business school, transformed their business concept entirely several times before finding the idea for Branch Metrics. Starting with a fitness collar for dogs, then starting over with developing a mobile application for low-cost, high-quality photobooks, and ultimately developing a...Starting at €8.20
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2016 Search Fund Study: Selected Observations
Kelly, P; Dodson, D; Grousheck, IH; Pohlmeyer, S; Rosenthal, SCase SGSB-E605-EEntrepreneurshipSince 1996, the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies (CES) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) has conducted a series of studies on the performance of search funds. These studies endeavor to gather data and gain insight into all known search funds. The studies aggregate the characteristics of search funds, present their principals’ backgrounds, and evaluate the investment returns generated by first-time search funds to their origina...Starting at €8.20
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Cofounders Equity Split Vignettes
Peter; Ziebelman, Matthew; SaucedoCase SGSB-E578-EEntrepreneurshipSplitting equity amongst cofounders is never an easy process. For the entrepreneurs, equity can sometimes be a measure of one’s value to a company, which can turn discussions over how to split it amongst the cofounding team into very personal and heated dStarting 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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AB InBev: Brewing an Innovation Strategy
Siegel, Robert, E.; Orleans, AmadeusCase SGSB-E643-EEntrepreneurshipAB InBev, the world’s largest beer company, faced serious challenges in 2017. First, large food and beverage companies were under-pressure due to shifting consumer preferences towards healthier products and increasing price pressure from retailers. The beer category, in particular, showed signs of stagnation in developed markets, such as the United States and Europe. Moreover, several major trends - e.g. localization of consumption and rise of cr...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