Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
Digital Tulips: High Risks, High Rewards in ICOs – Carroll School News
Boston University Carroll School of Management Assistant Professor of Finance Leonard Kostovetsky and Ph.D. candidate Hugo Benedetti (’19) recently co-authored a draft paper that explores how the high returns associated with Bitcoin, for instance, are in part a byproduct of the uncertainty that surrounds cryptocurrency. But as crypto becomes clearer, the researchers note that “that effect might be declining.”
The Social Science Research Network published the duo’s paper, entitled “Digital Tulips? Returns to Investors in Initial Coin Offerings,” which finds that “startups set a low, low price at the initial coin offering (ICO) stage to compensate for the volatility. In effect, it’s an uncertainty discount that keeps the price down, which drives up the returns.”
You can check out the full article on the official BC website.
People Aren’t Using Their Vacation Time. These Alumni Want to Fix That – D’Amore-McKim News
Treehoppr, “an online platform that tracks accrued time off,” was founded by Northeastern University D’Amore-McKim grads Kevin Corliss, DMSB (’16), Douglas Franklin, DMSB/E (’16), and Christopher Kenyon, CCIS (’17), in response to the “uniquely American” reality of how few working professionals take advantage of “paid time off.”
Treehoppr, an app created by a trio of D’Amore-McKim alumni, hopes to solve the uniquely American issue of not taking time off of work.
In an interview with their alma mater, Corliss says, “We want to help people eliminate these barriers to travel. What are the things you always hear when you ask people about traveling? They don’t have the time, the money, or the know-how when it comes to a foreign country. We want to help people solve all those issues.”
Dive into the trio’s story here.
The Gourmet MBA – Suffolk Experience
Suffolk University recently published a profile on current Sawyer Business School MBA Danielle Health (’19), whose @BostonBehavior Instagram profile demonstrates her knack for monetizing that very 21st century ritual of the meal snapshot—one she’s parlayed into a full-time job at social media management company Metter Media.
Health explains that she generally approaches the manager of “each restaurant she wants to visit as a one-time business partner.” She explains that her Instagram affords restaurants quite “a lot of visibility for a pretty minimal investment.”
She continues:
“Bigger food bloggers might have 100,000 followers. But that doesn’t matter if the people aren’t in Boston. About 90 percent of my followers are local to the Boston area, and most are my age. So I can deliver a really targeted and high-value group to a restaurant that I put on my feed.”
Check out the full profile here.