Jeff BussgangGeneral Partner, Flybridge and Senior Lecturer, HBS. Former entrepreneur. AI nerd.

Inside HBS with Jeff Bussgang: November 25, 2020

Name: Inside HBS with Jeff Bussgang: November 25, 2020
Uploaded: 2020-11-25T18:23:04+00:00
Duration: 1 min 30 s
Channel: Jeff Bussgang
Description: Jeff Bussgang gives a short update (close of week) describing two Harvard Business School cases discussed that week. The first case, "Sufa," describes a…

25 Nov 2020 · 2 min

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Jeff Bussgang gives a short update (close of week) describing two Harvard Business School cases discussed that week. The first case, "Sufa," describes a young founder who is being paired with a senior executive as executive chair while she struggles to raise a next round and must choose between an aggressive scaling plan (advocated by the executive chair) and a more conservative plan she prefers. The second case, "Mented" (revised with Professor Steve Rogers), follows two Black female founders of a cosmetics e-commerce company considering their first institutional raise; it highlights timing and sizing of fundraising and the particular challenges female founders and founders of color face in the venture capital ecosystem.

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Dale TV Just wanted to wrap up before the Thanksgiving holiday and let you all know about the two cases we had this week. First, we had sufa, a new case covering a really interesting situation where a young founder is being handed a strong senior executive to be the executive chair to help support her endeavor as she struggles to raise the next round of capital and decide between a more aggressive plan, which the executive chair is an advocate for, or a more conservative plan which she herself is feeling perhaps a bit more comfortable with. It's a really interesting situation, not only about pacing of scaling, but also how investors behave in situations where things aren't going quite right and how the founder can handle the outside help or perhaps reject the outside help, perhaps for very good reasons. The second case was mented. It's an old case that we brought back created by Professor Steve Rogers. He and I rewrote the case this time around to fit in the LTV curriculum and examine the situation that two black female founders have as they think about raising a new round of capital, a first round of capital for their cosmetics e commerce company. It raises really interesting issues both about when to raise money and how much to raise, as well as the challenges that female founders and founders of color face in our venture capital ecosystem. Have a great Thanksgiving everybody. Look forward to seeing all of you next week.