Browse abstracts and ordering information for case studies written and published by faculty at Stanford GSB.
For publicly available cases in this collection, Harvard Business Impact and Ivey Publishing distribute in North America, and The Case Centre and IESE Publishing in Europe.
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In 2019, Eve Burton, Chairwoman of HearstLab and Chief Legal Officer at Hearst Corporation, knew that HearstLab was at a key inflection point for growth—with opportunities to take on additional capital and expand internationally.
HearstLab is an…
Nico Shea founded Cumplo in 2011 to enable peer-to-peer lending for consumers before changing the company’s focus to small-to-medium businesses (SMBs). Cumplo was a financial technology (“fintech”) company that provided a platform for SMBs applying for a…
This case introduces students to the history of women in the venture capital industry. It explores the impact of gender diversity on both company performance and fund returns, describes the lack of funding for female founders, and highlights examples of…
Entrepreneurs looking to launch start-ups in developing economies must confront numerous challenges that their peers in more developed countries may be less likely to encounter. Depending on the country in which they are operating, entrepreneurs in…
CircleUp was founded in 2012 as a marketplace that matched accredited investors to emerging consumer packaged goods companies. A tool that the team developed early-on to reduce the friction involved in finding and evaluating new companies, Helio…
This note examines the corporate venture capital (CVC) industry, which has played an increasingly large role in the global innovation ecosystem, especially in Silicon Valley, over the last decade. The contents of the note include: a history of CVC…
Fundbox provides students with an in-depth look at how a financial technology company prototyping learning systems that allowed the team to quickly learn about their users’ most critical pain points. Once the team establishes a deep understanding of how…
David Bladow and Matthew Schwab, close friends and former college roommates, left their jobs and moved to San Francisco to start a new venture together. After exploring the gifting industry, they ultimately focused on floral delivery. They launched…
The Katerra case takes a deep dive into the opportunities to leverage disruptive technology in the global construction industry. The case analyzes the history of Katerra,a technology-driven offsite construction company and walks through each of the…
Mike 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…
The unexpected passing of Dave Goldberg in May 2015 triggered the most difficult period in the history of SurveyMonkey, a global online survey software company headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. In a state of emotional shock, the team was…
From 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…
After 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…
