Cases

Customer Segmentation

Case: Lytro

Assignment Questions:

Jason Rosenthal decides to bring in your team to provide a rapid turn-around analysis of the challenges that Lytro is facing in terms of customer adoption, with a focus on medium-term recommendations and some speculation about the longer term. Specifically, he would like to meet with the Board on late Friday afternoon, and would like to receive a report that covers the following questions:

1. Why has there been such disconnect between the initial reception of Lytro in the “tech” community and the broader population? Was Lytro’s initial management effective at driving market acceptance? Why or why not?
2. Looking forward, identify two distinct potential Lytro customer segments. Describe how these customers are different than each other, and how the value proposition for each group must differ. Which customer should Lytro choose? Can they serve both equally well?
3. If you had an opportunity to set one important priority for how Lytro is positioned for the long term, what single recommendation would you make to the Board?

• pptx-template to be used in class

Technology and Product Development

Case: Evisort

Assignment Questions:

1. What is text analytics? Where is it used? Why has it grown it popularity?
2. What is Evisort and how did it come about?
3. What are some ways analytics can be used in the legal field?
4. Why did Evisort decide to design its software for transactional use?
5. What are the stages of an Evisort project when it starts working with a new company?
6. How does Evisort ensure that the answers its software provides are accurate? How does the software mitigate errors the AI might make?
7. What is Evisort’s competitive advantage in the marketplace?
8. What is the main descision point the co-founders face at the end of the case? What factors need to be considered before the co-founders can plan their growth strategy?

Competition and Market Analysis

Case: Avatech

Assignment Questions: The Avatech founding team has developed four potential “models” for bringing Avatech to market:

• The Intellectual Property Model: Under this approach, Avatech would focus on building a reputation and intellectual property portfolio for being the leading innovator in snow safety. The goal would be to hire expert researchers and engineers in this field and aim at building a solid patent portfolio, which they would license out to other sporting equipment manufacturers.
• The Collaboration Model: Under this approach, Avatech would focus on building tight partnership with other established sporting equipment manufacturers. This strategy will allow Avatech to take advantage of the existing supplier and distribution channels and become a complement to the incumbent companies’ existing product portfolio. This would require Avatech to hire additional experienced business development people to build partnerships.
• The Leading Innovator Model: Under this approach, Avatech would focus on positioning itself as a differentiated sporting equipment brand with strong technological expertise. They would particularly aim at penetrating the early adopter group. In order to strike out on their own, Avatech would need to build its own value chain of suppliers and distributors.
• The Platform Model: In this model, Avatech would transform itself into a digital ski safety platform that integrate multiple sources of safety data, from Avatech users to forecasting services. This would require Avatech to hire software developers and data scientists to build the platform and analytics.

1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of these four alternatives?
2. Considering that the snow detecting equipment industry is still in its infancy, which of these approaches (or a variant of your own design) would help a startup such as Avatech establish a customer value proposition and also position Avatech to be able to succeed on an ongoing basis?
3. Provide a detailed action plan and the rationale for justifying your choice.
4. How would you size the relevant market for Avatech (i.e. ski (safety) equipment)?

(Platform) Business Models

Case: CampusHash

Assignment Questions:

1. What is CampusHash‘s current business model? (Only in class: Outline them with the business model canvas.)
2. How does it fit into the Entrepreneurial Strategy Compass?
3. How does the business model change with the three considered alternatives? (Only in class: Outline them with the business model canvas.)
4. How do the three considered alternatives fit into the Entrepreneurial Strategy Compass? What type of pivot does each of these business model changes refer to?
5. Develop one more additonal alternative with the Business Model Navigator Patterns! (Only in class.)
6. Can you evaluate and compare the currenet and alternative business models in monetary terms: i.e. annual costs, revenue, profits? (Optional: after class.)

Revenue Models and Pricing

Please choose in advance one of the following two cases to work on in your group:

Case 1: PassionConnect

Assignment Questions:

1. What criteria should the co-founders use to evaluate each of the revenue models they consider? ¹

2. Evaluate each revenue model against your selection of criteria – which one should they choose?
3. What are the key decisions to be made for the chosen revenue model in order to implement it?

Case 2: Basecamp

Assignment Questions:

1. Evaluate the price-testing process at Basecamp. Should Lorang have conducted different tests or in a different manner? What is the purpose of price testing at this stage of a venture?
2. Evaluate the results of the tests that Basecamp did conduct. What is your interpretation of the data from the A/B test, the price sensitivity survey, the team’s dicussion of “customers and comparables” (p. 11), and Fred’s comments about pricing (Exhibit 3)?
3. Evaluate each pricing option being considered for BC3. If you were Noah Lorang, which change (if any) would you recommend for BC3 and why?

Lean Startup & Experimentation

Please choose in advance one of the following three cases to work on in your group:

Case 1: Rent The Runway

Case 2: Dropbox

Case 3: Lit Motors

Assignment Questions for all three cases:

1. What hypotheses did the company seek to validate so far?
2. What did the company do to validate these hypotheses?
3. How do you evaluate these validation efforts? What was good, what could be improved and how?
4. What hypotheses should the company validate next? And how?

Marketing for Startup Growth

Case: Hubble Contact Lenses

Assignment Questions:

1. What are strengths and weaknesses in Hubble’s current business model? What are the expected changes in consumer behavior and decision making for the business model to work?
2. How efficiently does Hubble acquire and retain customers? What do they do well? What needs improvement? For in-class group work only: What is the customer lifetime value (CLV) of a Hubble customer? (Make reasonable assumptions as needed.) How is CLV likely to develop for Hubble over time? What can Hubble do to improve it? What factors work against it?
3. Assess how Hubble has used owned, earned, and paid media to support the customer journey and move customers through the acquisition funnel? What needs to change as the company scales? Why?
4. What is the role of offline and online advertising in acquiring Hubble customers? Evaluate the following decisions facing Hubble regarding online versus offline media allocation:
   • As of April 2018, Hubble is allocating 78% of its paid media spend to online advertising and 22% to traditional channels (i.e., TV, radio, podcast, and direct mail). Is this budget allocation between online and offline appropriate and if not, how would you adjust it?
   • Based on the results of the TV test campaigns (i.e. the $1 Million test across different markets and the World Series TV test), would you recommend that Hubble switch some of its spending to TV? Why or why not? How much do you trust the data coming out of these tests?
   • Should Hubble continue to spend the bulk of its budget on reaching new consumers or reallocate some of that spending to retarget those who have already been exposed to its ads? Why?
5. As Hubble prepares to scale its business following its upcoming fundraise, how should they allocate capital across the following decisions? Which, if any, would you priotitize in the short term?
   • Should Hubble expand its product line?
   • Should Hubble move beyond DTC? If so, should it open its own flagship stores, sell via a wholesale model through retailers, or create a reseller option for opticians?
   • Should Hubble expand internationally or focus on its business at home in the U.S.?
   • How do each of these scaling decisions impact Hubble’s integrated marekting communication strategy?

Sales for Startup Growth

Case: AnswerDash

Assignment Questions:

1. Assess AnswerDash’s current go-to-market approach, including customer selection, pricing, communication, and sales efforts. Which aspects do you like? Which ones don’t you like? For in-class group work only: Based on the current pricing model what is the customer lifetime value (CLV) to AnswerDash? (Make reasonable assumptions as needed.)
2. For in-class group work only: Calculate the economic value that the AnswerDash product delivers for an e-commerce vs. Software-as-a-Service customer. Separate between cost savings and revenue lift benefits. (As as a starting point, you can consider an organization with 100,000 monthly web visitors and $1,000,000 monthly revenues.)
3. What is your view on the three primary options AnswerDash is contemplating going forward? Which would you recommend by the company pursue?
4. For the strategic option you support, what would be your marketing & sales approach? What companies to target, how to position the value proposition, how to sell to an organization, and what pricing model / format to allow?

Organizing for Startup Growth

Case: N12-Technologies

Assignment Questions:

1. What were the major stages in N12’s scaling up process? What were the primary challenges? How effectively did the company manage the transistion from 4 to 27 employees?
2. What has been N12’s approach to (a) building an organization, (b) buildinhg a business? What (if any) is the conncetion between the two?
3. How would you describe the roles, responsibilities, and relationships of: (a) Berkson and Flavin, (b) Williams and Degitarov, (c) Jarosz and Gouldstone? How have the jobs changed over time? How would you advise them going forward?
4. What is your evaluation of N12’s future prospects? What do you see as the biggest opportunities? The primary threats or challenges? What (if anything) should they do differently?