Harvard Business Review

APRIL 21, 2016

When financial services company Square priced its IPO at $9 a share last November, well under the $15+ price that private investors paid the year before, it was a cold shower of reality for the 6-year-old company. Until the IPO, Square had been one of more than 130 unicorns: privately owned tech companies valued at $1 billion or more.

IPO 8

IPO Innovation Price Operations 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

On February 13, 2018, the New York Times reported that Uber is planning an IPO. Twitter reported a loss of $79 million before its IPO, yet it commanded a valuation of $24 billion on its IPO date in 2013. Many digital companies have no physical products and have no inventory to report.

Company 8

Company Intangible Assets Depreciation IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 26, 2011

In the last year, however, early-stage investments in clean energy production technologies have fallen substantially (see the table at the end of this piece for more detail). A star example is Google, which raised a mere $40 million in private funding before its IPO at a $23 billion valuation.

Energy 11

Energy Finance IPO Biotechnology 11

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 23, 2013

The most motivated and productive people I’ve seen recently work in an older company on the American East Coast deploying innovative technology products to transform a traditional industry. Their products are early stage, which means daily frustrations as they run through successive iterations.

Motivation 10

Motivation IPO Norton Open-book 10

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 16, 2011

This is the essence of Groupon's declaration last week that it will remove the controversial accounting metric called Adjusted Consolidated Segment Operating Income (ACSOI) from its financial statements. The company's product is not more valuable to users as more people adopt the platform.

Christensen 18

Christensen Fixed Costs Metrics Business Model 18

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 30, 2014

The M&A markets are frothy, corporations are investing in Silicon Valley labs, and even PhDs looking for jobs in business schools are finding it tough to find homes without “innovation” somewhere in their background. But it’s an idea that demands attention, investment, and a long view of the market.

Long-term 10

Long-term Innovation Company IPO 10

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 1, 2011

Microfinance has come under fire in the past 18 months, triggered in part by SKS Microfinance's IPO. Critics complain that the institutions supporting microfinance have become too greedy, and many are using this as an argument to deeply regulate or, even more, cut support to microfinance operations.

Microfinance 13

Microfinance IPO Bottom-up Finance 13

Harvard Business Review

MAY 16, 2016

Strategic alignment, for us, means that all elements of a business — including the market strategy and the way the company itself is organized — are arranged in such a way as to best support the fulfillment of its long-term purpose. But corporate leaders today seem to agree that strategic alignment is high on the list.

Banking 13

Banking Strategy Film Operations 13

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 18, 2014

The company was hell-bent on entering a new market but knew it had to automate its warehouse to do so. Warehouse automation systems are big and complicated; if they don’t work, you’re worse off than before since it becomes almost impossible to ship product. BlueArc’s new product hit the market and was an instant success.

CFO 8

CFO Venture Funding IPO Retail 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 6, 2014

At the time, though, we were just in search of a new approach to building a sustainable business in that critical but often difficult market. In fact, you could say (and many did) that our previous attempts had failed, in that we hadn’t established a sustained market position. Things hadn’t gone well up until that point.

Chief Financial Officer 9

Chief Financial Officer Operations Learning-by-Doing IPO 9

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 28, 2014

Er brands rely on other products or brands to explain their own. It also puts your brand under constant pressure to introduce new products on Brand X’s time line, because now your brand value is tied to Brand X’s product. That sets the bar quite high, and I understand not every product can be truly new to the world.

Brand 9

Brand IPO Marketing Strategy Airlines 9

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 28, 2016

Then the banks decided to turn the associations into for-profit companies, IPO them, and cash out. MasterCard IPO’d in 2006, and Visa followed two years later. Around the world, though, many countries still have domestic payment networks that operate as not-for-profit platforms. Now they are very focused on making money.

IPO 8

IPO Succession Technology Software 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Great universities will spur firms to design and manufacture products locally. Today’s model is using African diasporas where companies hire native Africans living abroad and then send them to the continent to expand their operations. The value created by Facebook and a few other tech IPOs exceeds the GDP of most African regions.

Education 8

Education Technology IPO GDP 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 24, 2017

Major organizational changes, covering everything from recruiting and branding to regulatory approvals and marketing, happened in rapid succession, with a hard deadline of 12 months to get it all done for the IPO — and 18 months from the IPO until our full separation from GE. This has paid off dramatically.

Management 10

Management IPO Diversity Long-term 10

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 4, 2016

Even when startups have great products and customer interest, they struggle with long-term growth. To borrow an analogy from our Harvard Business School colleague Shikhar Ghosh, their firms aren’t murdered by the market; they commit suicide because the founders can’t or won’t adapt to the organizations’ changing needs.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Sample IPO Long-term 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 10, 2011

Consider Zipcar, whose recent IPO valued the 11-year old company at over $1 billion. The company came from nowhere into a rental car business dominated by giants such as Hertz and Avis, creating a new market of by-the-hour rentals. They want data, even though data on non-existent markets is inherently fictional.

Venture Capitalist 12

Venture Capitalist Venture Funding Entrepreneur IPO 12

Harvard Business Review

MAY 24, 2013

In the book, I tell the stories of scale-up entrepreneurs from around the world, and how they beat the odds to make a mark on their markets. I used to think our great technology would take us to leadership in our market — now I realize it is our team, our organization, our marketing and our ambition to sell.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur IPO Open-book Marketing 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 25, 2014

After five years, in 2004, Tickle was profitable with more than $20 million in revenue; it received an acquisition offer for $100 million, as well as IPO entreaties. The most important way to mitigate risk is to become excellent at either engineering, product, selling, or operations and management.

Career 8

Career Company IPO Christensen 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 13, 2015

With limited exit opportunities via initial public offers ( IPOs ) and acquisitions, smart young people understand that stock options rarely bring a big payday. He invested in training his staff, but that backfired as those individuals then became more marketable and moved on.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist IPO Entrepreneur Banking 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

The first category is exogenous factors over which the business has little control: the growth of the markets into which it sells; the competitive intensity and thus the average profitability of the industry in which it operates; or the fragmentation of its industry and thus the scope for a growth-by-acquisition approach.

Chemicals 8

Chemicals How To Kahneman Reputation 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 7, 2016

Few things are more damaging to a brand’s reputation than a hack in the headlines, and in the event of a public security incident, it’s highly likely that the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and the Chief Security Officer (CSO) will be the first people the CEO looks to and says “What do we do now?”

Planning 9

Planning Company Crisis Brand 9

Harvard Business Review

MAY 30, 2013

A good management team will be dedicated to creating product market fit, otherwise the business will flounder. Investors are involved for the long haul, understanding that startup managers will have to experiment and fail along the way to a successful IPO. In a good start-up, these characteristics are not hard to find.

Company 8

Company Ries Maturity Innovation 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 5, 2011

If you think about how new products and services are hatched and brought to market today, it isn't usually the doing of just one entity — least of all the corporate R&D labs that once served as our engines of tomorrow. But we also bet it isn't your usual perspective on the world of VCs and IPO lawyers. You get this.

Entrepreneur 14

Entrepreneur Innovation Intellectual Capital Mission Statement 14

Harvard Business Review

JULY 27, 2017

Talented founders know that corporations simply cannot replicate the deep experience private VCs have in starting companies, nor their expertise in assisting startups with complex challenges such as deal making, business modeling, resolving disputes among founders, executing a successful IPO, and so on. Creating the Venture Client Model.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Meyer Innovation Fixed Costs 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 6, 2015

Yet for how substantial the market is, there’s relatively little data on the decision making process of those who invest in early stage startups. Rather, they found that conditional on the idea, the team is quite important — more so than the product’s initial traction and ability to attract earlier investors.

Long-term 8

Long-term IPO Human Capital Finance 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 27, 2018

stock exchanges has declined by almost 50% from its peak in 1996, despite dramatic increase in aggregate market capitalization. They operate as lean organizations, using cloud and internet-based infrastructure, and launch and distribute products more quickly than did firms that competed with factories, warehouses, inventories, and suppliers.

IPO 10

IPO Company First-mover Advantage Intangible Assets 10

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 20, 2013

China leads all emerging markets with 89 companies on the latest Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest. To many skeptical consumers in developed markets, Brand China still means lower quality. Western brands also want access to China and recent global market turmoil has exposed many targets for astute Chinese brands.

Brand 8

Brand Globalization Company Development 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 19, 2017

Previously dominated by the likes of newspapers, magazines, gyms, utilities, and telecommunications firms, more products and services are being offered to more people through subscriptions than ever before. went public in June, then saw its stock price fall 70%, making it the worst performing IPO of a major company so far in 2017.

IPO 8

IPO How To Metrics Bottom-up 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 24, 2017

Then, via price dynamics determined by market supply and demand, the value is settled on by the network of participants, rather than by a central authority or government. As of March 2017, the market capitalization of the ether token was more than $4 billion.). Insight Center. Business in the Era of Blockchain.

Venture Capitalist 11

Venture Capitalist Due Diligence Finance Long-term 11

Harvard Business Review

JULY 12, 2017

Digital players wield outsize market power. With products that rely on network effects, these players enjoy economies of scale and dominant market share. With products that rely on network effects, these players enjoy economies of scale and dominant market share. Digital markets are uneven.

Innovation 8

Innovation Policies Technology Politics 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 8, 2013

operator of theme parks including SeaWorld and Busch Gardens, recently filed for an initial public offering (IPO). Best known for its aquatic shows featuring Shamu the killer whale , SeaWorld's IPO filing specifies that a key future growth strategy will be to "expand in-park per capita spending through new and enhanced offerings.by

Price 8

Price IPO Discount Bottom-up 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 10, 2015

Only a handful of so-called unicorns — companies that have achieved a valuation of over $1 billion in the last 10 years — come from Israel, and only one Israeli firm, Teva, ranks in the world’s 500 largest companies by market capitalization. In 2014, for example, 18 IPOs raised a record-breaking $9.8 We think so.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Entrepreneur Marketing IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 9, 2010

She'd mentioned her business, Calidad de Vida, a group of day care centers for the elderly, and he'd peppered her with questions, explaining that he was interested not only as a doctor (he was the leading cardiothoracic surgeon at Madrid's best hospital) but also as a potential investor (he'd unloaded his stocks just before the market collapsed).

Case Study 13

Case Study Franchising Health Care Follow-up 13

Harvard Business Review

JULY 20, 2017

DNA genetic testing company 23andMe fell behind on its communications with the FDA, resulting in a temporary ban on marketing the company’s personal genetic screening services to the public. A123 Systems promised to be a clean tech success with a soaring IPO in 2009. and shifts its local focus to engineering and testing.

Innovation 12

Innovation Productivity Products Venture Capitalist 12

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 6, 2015

You develop minimally viable products, keep testing different market and product hypotheses, and pivot based on the market feedback you get. You expect to fail repeatedly and hope to eventually get to a product-market fit. You get your technology into the market and see who wants it.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Entrepreneur IPO Wireless 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 14, 2014

Its IPO in 1999 was a sensation ; by autumn 2000 its market capitalization topped $65 billion and the ratio of its stock price to the next year’s projected earnings was a staggering 483. Its high-end Internet routers were gaining share on market-leader Cisco, and the sky was the limit. Neither have acquisitions.

Hedge 8

Hedge Chief Technology Officer Maturity IPO 8