Decline of the Unicorns (A Startup Tale)
In advance of his upcoming course, ‘How to Finance and Grow Your Startup – Without VC,’ set to start 12 April 2016, London Business School’s blog recently spoke with Management Practice in Marketing and Entrepreneurship Professor John Mullins to gain insight into why we are starting to see a sharp decline in the value of so-called “unicorn” start-ups.
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Harvard 1st Year MBA Students Present IPO Day
May 14 marked IPO Day at Harvard Business School, where students in the FIELD 3 course had the opportunity to present viable businesses to 900+ first year MBA students. The audience cheered as teams presented ideas ranging from making single origin chocolates fun and accessible (DelectareChocolates.com), a solution that ‘unshrinks’ woolen clothing (Unshrinkit.com) to an app (SpotRocket.co) that promised to help job seekers find the “hottest start-up to work for.”
This presentation capped the yearlong FIELD course. FIELD 3, the final module, thrust students into experiencing the real-world roles of entrepreneur, analyst, marketer, and investor. It challenged them to refine the leadership and teamwork skills they learned in FIELD 1 last fall, and the product or service development skills they practiced while working with global partner organizations during FIELD 2. The students had two months to refine their ideas and develop a customer sales pitch, all leading up to Launch Day in mid-April, and teams with a viable idea advanced to this month’s IPO Day.
“Our objective with FIELD 3 was to provide students with an opportunity to apply and integrate the knowledge, skills, and tools acquired in the first-year curriculum,” says Senior Associate Dean Youngme Moon, chair of the MBA Program. “It exposed the entire class to the challenge and excitement of being an entrepreneur, creating an idea, and making it a reality. “The focus was on taking action, learning from the response to that action, and making changes to improve your chances of success,” Moon continues. “Almost all successful ventures go through this ‘pivoting’ process multiple times as they probe and test their ideas. FIELD 3 uniquely challenged students to experience that process and learn from it.”
