E490
Jeffrey Chambers, Jason Luther
2013
It was February 2009, when Eric Edelson wondered to himself how he had gotten into this situation. Less than two years earlier, Edelson had been an MBA student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business ready to market a footwear product to the elderly…
E480B
Mark Leslie, Russell Lewis Siegelman, Austin Kiessig
2013
Blue River Technology begins with background on company co-founder Jorge Heraud and the founding story of the enterprise. Blue River was created by Heraud and co-founder Lee Redden, who were both graduate students at Stanford University when they began…
E480A
Mark Leslie, Russell Lewis Siegelman, Austin Kiessig
2013
Blue River Technology begins with background on company co-founder Jorge Heraud and the founding story of the enterprise. Blue River was created by Heraud and co-founder Lee Redden, who were both graduate students at Stanford University when they began…
E472
Robert B. Chess, Austin Kiessig
2013
Brown Robin Capital details the experiences of Stanford GSB graduates Ryan Robinson and Lucas Braun in pursuing a search fund acquisition. The case explains the search fund model and provides historical asset class performance statistics. Then, the…
E474
Jonathan Levav, Russell Lewis Siegelman, Austin Kiessig
2013
The Intuit’s Small Business Health Insurance Solutions case details a failed product launch experiment by Intuit, an innovative software company. The case first delves into Intuit’s history and competitive position. Then, the case discusses Intuit’s…
F306A
George Parker, Alan Rappaport, Jaclyn Foroughi, Vanessa Lide
2013
Paul Schroder had recently celebrated his sixty-eighth birthday and was beginning to feel his age. While he recognized that there were many good years ahead, he also realized that it was not too early to begin to think seriously about his retirement and…
F288
William Meehan III, Paul Pfleiderer, Michael Kennedy, Debra McCoy
2013
This case describes the history of the International Finance Corporation’s Private Equity Investment Funds Group, which invests the IFC’s capital in private equity funds located in Emerging and Frontier Market countries. The IFC began investing in private…
L20
Hayagreeva Rao, Robert Sutton, David Hoyt
2013
The Rapid Equipping Force (REF) was a center of innovation within the U.S. Army. Its origins traced back to 2002, and by 2013 it had developed solutions to thousands of problems faced by soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. It addressed problems as varied as…
L22CHN
Sheila Melvin, Larissa Z. Tiedens, Webb McKinney, Yifat Sharabi-Levine, John Cronkite, David Hoyt, Margot Sutherland
2013
This is a role-play case, intended for use in a leadership development course for MBA students. The case has four roles, two each for students playing U.S.- and China-based managers. There are two versions of the case, one for students playing the role…
A209
Maureen McNichols, Anne Casscells, Jaclyn Foroughi
2013
Amid worldwide market and economic uncertainty, Tesla debuted its stock in June 2010 on the NASDAQ Stock Market (Ticker Symbol: TSLA). The stock price jumped over 40 percent in its first day of trading to close at $23.89 in an upsized deal that valued the…
E444
Ilya Strebulaev, Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, David Hoyt
2013
This 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…
F306B
George Parker, Alan Rappaport, Jaclyn Foroughi
2013
Having identified his “needs and dreams,” Paul Schroder had to figure out what to do next.
Putting emotions aside, he needed to identify the best options to come up with the required amounts of liquidity at the right times.
As Schroder thought through…
E470
Andrew Rachleff, Sara Rosenthal
2013
The Airbnb case describes the very early days of this startup, beginning with the founders’ original concept of renting out air beds and serving breakfast (“Airbed and Breakfast”) in their apartment to conference attendees as an alternative to expensive…
GS61B
David Hoyt, Hau Lee, Michael Marks
2013
This is an update to GS-61, describing developments at the company through 2011, including a major acquisition, distribution in China, and an initiative to cultivate start-ups that might grow into future clients.
E433
Robert Chess, Sara Rosenthal
2013
The Sunrun case profiles the evolution of this residential solar financing startup, focusing on the company’s hypergrowth during its early years. The case begins with Sunrun’s launch by two GSB graduates, Ed Fenster and Lynn Jurich, together with one of…
GS79
Hau L. Lee, Sonali Rammohan
2013
Before opening its first store in India in 1996, McDonald’s spent six years building its supply chain. During that time, the company worked to successfully source as many ingredients as possible from India. However, French fries (“MacFries”) were a…
F285
Michael Kennedy, Debra McCoy, William Meehan III, Paul Pfleiderer
2013
The Global Environment Fund (GEF) is a private equity fund focused on investments in environmental and energy solutions in both developed and developing markets. The fund is currently examining the strategy of one of its portfolio companies–NEOgás, a…
F308
George Parker, Alan Rappaport, Jaclyn Foroughi
2013
Richard Lund had reached an important crossroads in his life. At age 65, Lund had had a great deal of success—and amassed much wealth—but he needed to devise a plan for the future. Namely, he needed to figure out what to do with the wealth of which he was…
IB106
Glenn Carroll, Debra Schrifin, David Brady
2013
The case discusses Nike’s sustainability and labor practices from 1998 to 2013, focusing on the successful steps Nike took up and down the supply chain and in its headquarters to make its products and processes more environmentally friendly, and the…
E449
Ilya Strebulaev, Hornblower Jocelyn
2012
This case tells the story of OPENLANE and CEO Peter Kelly’s history with the company, from its founding in 1999 to its potential sale in 2011. The case describes the early stages of the company, the impacts of various economic downturns on the business…
E446
H. Irving Grousbeck, Arar Han, Sara Rosenthal
2012
Since 1996, the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies (CES) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business has conducted a series of studies on the performance of search funds. This study, as well as its predecessors in 1996, 1998, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, and…
P81A
Steven Callander, David Hoyt
2012
This case recounts Uber’s experience in four cities at different points in time. This approach offers a way to examine Uber’s strategy for market entry and evaluate the performance of that strategy in these four cities, as well as elsewhere in the world…
M354
Jennifer Aaker, Maile Lesica, Barbara McCarthy, Tina Sharkey, Tamsin Smith
2012
Stories drive almost everything we do, whether it is the motivation for why we raise our children a certain way, or the backstory for choosing one product over another at the grocery store. In ways that logical arguments and data are not, stories are…
E426A
Michael Child, Sara Rosenthal
2012
The Tiny Prints case describes the founding of the online stationery company in 2004, through its growth and evolution to 2007. The three cofounders bootstrapped the company from the beginning, primarily so that they could retain control over the…
