Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 20, 2018

NewTV is the creation of Jeffrey Katzenberg, whose track record includes head of production at Paramount, chair of Walt Disney Studios, and cofounder of DreamWorks. Because the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. IPOs dried up.

IPO 8

IPO First-mover Advantage Business Model Agility 8

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 11

Motivation IPO Norton Open-book 11

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

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

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

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

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

MAY 16, 2016

For example, as it grew, Facebook found that its early “move fast and break things” culture had to be funneled into focused technical teams and product groups to make its product development process faster and less erratic, and for it to have a chance of meeting the demands of its new public shareholders following its IPO.

Banking 14

Banking Strategy Film Operations 14

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 10

Brand IPO Marketing Strategy Airlines 10

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 30, 2014

The typical enterprise software startup that IPOs is at least 7 years old (to say nothing of those that try and fail). In the year before Google IPO’d, it did about $962 million in revenue. Slowly, the company built out proprietary software systems to allow its customers to get more out of its product.

Long-term 10

Long-term Innovation Company IPO 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 19

Christensen Fixed Costs Metrics Business Model 19

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

APRIL 18, 2014

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 devices were high-end, but its management believed it needed a mid-priced product to get it through the recession. Their ability to execute. It had to be.

CFO 8

CFO Venture Funding IPO Retail 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 4, 2016

Even when startups have great products and customer interest, they struggle with long-term growth. But as a venture scales and becomes more complex , more operational and commercial sophistication is required to manage it. Often, our research shows, the biggest obstacles are the entrepreneurs themselves.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Sample IPO Long-term 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 6, 2014

In each iteration, we spent a lot of time thinking about what might make the best use of our existing product. 3721’s core product was essentially an early form of search: a browser download that helped users in China go directly to destination web sites. We were ready to do things differently when we purchased 3721.

Chief Financial Officer 10

Chief Financial Officer Operations Learning-by-Doing IPO 10

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 30, 2012

With the JOBS Act , the rise of international accelerators , the upcoming Facebook IPO , and the mind-blowing $1 billion Instagram acquisition , you can be sure that droves of young, ambitious founders will be jumping on the start-up bandwagon. Think twice if your resume gets more share-of-mind than building great products.

Ries 16

Ries IPO Entrepreneur Maturity 16

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Nadathur's portfolio includes firms operating in drug discovery research, companion diagnostics, pharmaceutical analytics, reimbursement claims processing, patient relationship management, and specialty healthcare delivery for running clinical trials — and they all work together.

Marketing 15

Marketing Venture Capitalist Biotechnology IPO 15

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 29, 2015

Brian Fitzpatrick joined Google as a senior software engineer in 2005, shortly after the company’s IPO. He had no formal authority as a leader, operating without any title or mandate. Strategic leaders like Brian, who don’t hold positions of authority, operated in ways that were tailored to a less formal context.

Strategy 8

Strategy Power Idea Generation Project 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 24, 2013

Indeed, many would-be entrepreneurs who are drawn by the romantic vision of developing a snazzy new app or product pooh-pooh selling as beneath their dignity. Voltaire got the technology down pat but struggled with selling a product that enterprise customers were leery of. Without it, you will always be a mom-and-pop operation.

Entrepreneur 8

Entrepreneur IPO Open-book Marketing 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 10, 2011

Consider Zipcar, whose recent IPO valued the 11-year old company at over $1 billion. Unfortunately, Microsoft tied its tablet concepts to its Windows operating system and made them merely pen-enabled personal computers, so these products remained a tiny niche of the computing industry. Necessity truly is the mother of invention.

Venture Capitalist 13

Venture Capitalist Venture Funding Entrepreneur IPO 13

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. The tools used by Silicon Valley, London, and Paris to hire top talent — namely stock options — seldom work in Africa.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist IPO Entrepreneur Banking 8

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 9

Company Ries Maturity Innovation 9

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

Here’s a generalized scenario similar to cases we’ve experienced: A hot new mobile technology company lands one of the most successful IPOs of the year. Even a rumor of a breach can trigger a communications crisis. A hacker going by the name of ‘Tumbleweed’ enters a forum and brags that the device can be hacked.

Planning 9

Planning Company Crisis Brand 9

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. First, why is it a sector?

Entrepreneur 15

Entrepreneur Innovation Intellectual Capital Mission Statement 15

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 6, 2015

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. The formula for long-term success may be different, though, when you consider how founders are often replaced , for various reasons, before the startup’s IPO.

Long-term 8

Long-term IPO Human Capital Finance 8

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.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Meyer Innovation Fixed Costs 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 27, 2018

The number of listed firms can decline because of three developments: 1) bankruptcy, failure, or closure of listed firms, 2) delisting of firms going private or acquired, and 3) decrease in number of initial public offerings (IPOs). Furthermore, as production shifts to Asia and more and more U.S.

IPO 11

IPO Company First-mover Advantage Intangible Assets 11

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 21, 2016

In 2000, with more than $100 million in negative cash flow, the company agreed to be acquired by Star Cruises, a leading cruise operator in Asia. Norwegian encouraged its employees, in other words, to adopt an owner’s mindset: a powerful sense of responsibility for all of their employees, customers, products and decisions.

Company 9

Company IPO Price Loyalty 9

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

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

NOVEMBER 20, 2013

Since positioning is vital in new markets, today’s boards must include Chief Marketing Officers, not just directors with operations or finance backgrounds. Only a small minority thought low-cost operations would be an advantage in three years’ time. Rebrand from the inside out. That may say more about the xenophobia of U.S.

Brand 8

Brand Globalization Company Development 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 24, 2017

Rather than tying up vast amounts of funds in a unicorn startup and waiting for the long play — an IPO or an acquisition — investors can see gains more quickly, and can pull profits out more easily, via ICOs. The second reason VCs are becoming more interested in ICOs is because of the liquidity of cryptocurrencies.

Venture Capitalist 11

Venture Capitalist Due Diligence Finance Long-term 11

Harvard Business Review

JULY 12, 2017

With products that rely on network effects, these players enjoy economies of scale and dominant market share. They have deep resources for innovation with the ability to accelerate the penetration and adoption of digital products. that help propagate new products, ideas and business models?).

Innovation 8

Innovation Policies Technology Politics 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 9, 2010

Why would an IPO be so bad? On it were listed operational rules and four core values: honesty (speak clearly but with respect), enthusiasm (those who don't believe don't belong), transparency (information is available to everyone), and a search for the common good (put yourself in the clients' shoes). Herzlinger is the Nancy R.

Case Study 13

Case Study Franchising Health Care Follow-up 13

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 10, 2015

In 2014, for example, 18 IPOs raised a record-breaking $9.8 We selected this benchmark because it reflects the phase in which companies have proven product viability, achieved initial product/market fit, and are now expanding sales and growing more complex operations. billion, compared to just $1.2 billion in 2013.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Entrepreneur Marketing IPO 8