Entrepreneurship: Funding & IPO

29 Results

 

Creating a Venture Ecosystem in Brazil: FINEP’s INOVAR Project

Ann Leamon and Josh Lerner

Since the mid-1990s, several groups in Brazil have been working on developing an indigenous venture capital ecosystem, largely to stimulate the establishment of innovative companies and help them gain access to capital. In 2000, the Brazilian government's Agency for Innovation (Financiadora de Estudos e Projectos, or FINEP), with support from the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), unveiled INOVAR, a program to address these needs. In the 12 years since INOVAR's debut, the program has had two iterations and has been recognized as a role model for government efforts to stimulate a VC ecosystem. In this paper, Ann Leamon and Josh Lerner present a brief background on private equity in both Latin America and Brazil, then explore the genesis of INOVAR (Innovation), the details of the program, and its results. They conclude with challenges to be addressed. Read More

When Founders Recruit Friends and Family as Investors

In his new book, The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, HBS Associate Professor Noam Wasserman tells readers how to anticipate, avoid, and, if necessary, recover from the landmines that can destroy a nascent company before it has the chance to thrive. In this excerpt, he discusses the pros and cons of recruiting friends and family members as investors. Open for comment; 6 Comments posted.

Investment Cycles and Startup Innovation

Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

In this paper, HBS professors Nanda and Rhodes-Kropf examine how the environment in which a new venture was first funded relates to its ultimate outcome, by specifically looking at what happened to venture capital-backed startups funded between 1980 and 2004. Results show that firms that were funded in "hot" markets were more likely to fail but created more value and had more highly cited patents when they succeeded. These results suggest that that flood of capital in hot markets lowers the cost of experimentation for early stage investors, and therefore allows them to fund more novel projects in periods of heated financial activity. Read More

Perfecting the Project Pitch

Entrepreneurs may be great innovators, but not necessarily great presenters. Associate Professor Thomas Steenburgh teaches them the fine art of product pitching. Open for comment; 8 Comments posted.

The First Deal: The Division of Founder Equity in New Ventures

Thomas F. Hellmann and Noam Wasserman

When starting a company, entrepreneurs must decide how to divide shares among the founders. The simplest way is to split the shares equally, which is what one third of startups decide to do. But that may not be the fairest or most effective way—especially in cases where some founders are doing more for the company than others. In this paper, Thomas F. Hellman (University of British Columbia) and Noam Wasserman (Harvard Business School) examine when and whether teams are likely to divide shares equally among all the founders, and explore whether such an equity split is good for the company. Read More

Financing Risk and Bubbles of Innovation

Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

While start-up firms are key to any technological revolution, they also run a high risk of failure. To that end, investors often provide limited capital in several careful stages, gaining confidence in a firm before doling out another round of funding. However, these investors still face the possibility that other investors won't provide follow-on funding, even when the firm's prospects remain sound. That's a big risk for individual investors who can't afford to fund a new firm all by themselves, and whose investment will flounder if others don't invest, too. Research by HBS professors Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf explores why future investors may not fund the project at its next stage even if the fundamentals of the project have not changed. Read More

Labor Regulations and European Private Equity

Ant Bozkaya and William R. Kerr

Recent theoretical models predict that countries with stricter labor policies will specialize in less innovative activities due to the higher worker turnover frequently associated with rapidly changing sectors. HBS visiting scholar Ant Bozkaya and HBS professor William R. Kerr examine how differences in labor regulations across European countries influence the development of private equity markets, comprised of venture capital and buy-out investors. In so doing, the researchers provide the first empirical evidence for this theoretical prediction at the industry level in the entrepreneurial finance literature. They also make a methodological contribution by demonstrating how jointly modeling the different policies for providing worker insurance delivers more consistent results than their individual relationships would indicate by themselves. Read More

Government’s Positive Role in Kick-Starting Entrepreneurship

Josh Lerner

The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars bailing out troubled companies. Is it time for Uncle Sam to invest in new entrepreneurial firms as well? Professor Josh Lerner makes the case for limited government involvement in his book Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed—and What to Do about It. Read More

Updating a Classic: Writing a Great Business Plan

William A. Sahlman

Harvard Business School professor William A. Sahlman's article on how to write a great business plan is a Harvard Business Review classic, and has just been reissued in book form. We asked Sahlman what he would change if he wrote the article, now a decade old, today. Read More

The Money Connection—Understanding VC Networks

Venture capital firms often consider investments in companies located far away or in unfamiliar industries. How do they spot these opportunities and also reduce risk? It's the power of networks, says Harvard Business School professor Toby Stuart—and understanding how they work in VC is just now starting to be understood. Read More

The Success of Reverse Leveraged Buyouts

Josh Lerner

RLBOs have a bad rap, but Josh Lerner says the reputation is not deserved. Studying almost 500 private equity-led IPOs over a 22-year period, Lerner and co-researcher Jerry Cao conclude that reverse leveraged buyouts in general outperformed other IPOs and the market as a whole. Quick flips, however, are another story. Read More

International Financial Integration and Entrepreneurship

Laura Alfaro and Andrew Charlton

Why does entrepreneurship flourish in some countries and struggle in others? Economists and policymakers are divided on whether the rapid rate of global financial integration, specifically the explosive growth of foreign direct investment, helps or hurts local entrepreneurs and domestic economies. To see the differential effects of restrictions on capital mobility on entrepreneurship, Alfaro of HBS and Charlton of the London School of Economics analyzed data on 24 million firms—listed and unlisted—in nearly 100 countries in 1999 and 2004. Read More

VCs Survey Post-Bubble Opportunities

At the annual Cyberposium conference held at Harvard Business School, venture capitalists pondered what makes for winners and losers in the new VC landscape. Read More

How Can Start Ups Grow?

Mukti Khaire

For new ventures a lack of resources makes growth difficult to come by—just ask those nine out of ten fledgling firms that fail. Professor Mukti Khaire says the key may be in acquiring intangible resources such as legitimacy, status, and reputation. Read More

Four VCs on Evaluating Opportunities

Four venture capitalists explain to Harvard Business School professor Mike Roberts and senior research associate Lauren Barley how they evaluate potential investments. Read More

Cash and the Woman-Owned Business

Female entrepreneurs often lack start-up cash. This excerpt from the book Clearing the Hurdles, co-authored by HBS professor Myra M. Hart, explains what women can do about it. Read More

How Women Can Get More Venture Capital

Myra M. Hart

What is it like today for women entrepreneurs in their quest for venture capital funding? In an interview, professor Myra M. Hart shares her latest research and ideas. Read More

Entrepreneurship in Asia and Foreign Direct Investment

A look at local entrepreneurship in four economies in Asia offers a fascinating lens on Foreign Direct Investment, says HBS professor Yasheng Huang. Discussing his new research proposal at an HBS International Seminar recently, Huang also offered insights on what it might mean as China rises. Read More

Case Study: A Lesson in Private Venture Financing

Using a case discussion on Gray Security Services, Harvard Business School associate professor Walter Kuemmerle highlights issues confronting entrepreneurs and investors interested in Africa. Read More

Venture Capital: Hot Markets and Current Industry Trends

Yes, the economy has soured. But that doesn't mean venture capitalists are waiting on the sidelines. VC panelists discuss what is hot (healthcare), what is not (wireless), and how daily life has changed (a lot). Read More

Women Entrepreneurs Use Springboard for Funding

The Springboard Venture Capital Forum, held recently at Harvard Business School, was a platform for twenty-three women entrepreneurs seeking heavy-duty financing. Read More

Five Questions for Paul Gompers and Josh Lerner

Paul A. Gompers and Josh Lerner

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How To Be an Angel Investor

Is angel investing right for you? HBS professor Howard Stevenson and David Amis, previous Managing Director of the Venture Capital Report, provide tools and advice to potential angels, and a resource manual for early stage investors. Read More

Angels Face the Innovator’s Dilemma

According to HBS professor Clayton M. Christensen, the venture capital industry—like computers, telephony, and brokerage before it—is susceptible to the same forces that have waylaid many seemingly invincible players. What that means, said the author of the influential bestseller The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, is that the time is ripe for the right people to create new, disruptive forms of financing. Read More

Networked Incubators: Hothouses of the New Economy

Are business incubators a fleeting phenomenon or a lasting way of bringing start-ups to fruition? Four HBS professors argue that one particular model—the "networked incubator"—is most likely to endure. Read More

Something Ventured, Something Gained: A European View of Venture Capital

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Incubators: The New Venture Capitalists?

Once the sleepy domain of universities and public development agencies, business incubators have shown new life in the Internet economy. Focused on providing new ventures not just with funding, but also with services, advice, connections and physical space, they offer a new way for dot.com companies to get to market fast. Four leaders from this rapidly growing industry looked at incubators and their relation to the traditional world of venture capital. Read More

The Right Connections

In attracting funding for a new venture, report HBS Professor Monica Higgins and her colleague Ranjay Gulati of Northwestern University, professional ties and company connections are even more important than a good product in inspiring the trust and loosening the wallets of potential investors. Read More

How to Write a Great Business Plan

HBS Professor William Sahlman tells entrepreneurs how to give themselves a better shot at success. Read More