Introductory Case

As promised, this post outlines the first three cases of my “Founders’ Dilemmas” MBA course (see my previous post for the course overview).

This post covers the Course Introduction case and the two cases from the “When to Found” module, and provides for each case the official case description, a list of the case’s core issues, and a link to the HBS Publishing entry for that case. As mentioned before, case studies are often invaluable for helping founders, employees, and investors understand the issues they are facing or will be facing in the future (or even help them gain insights into their past experiences!), so if you want to see any of the full cases, you can get them from the HBS Publishing site via the HBSP links below.

COURSE INTRODUCTION – Provide an overview of key issues from across the course.

• Case: “Apple’s Core” (HBSP entry)

Case description:“Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are best friends who enjoy pulling pranks together and talking about electronics. After several small collaborations, Jobs pitches Wozniak on starting a company together to sell computers based on Wozniak’s design for a personal computer. Wozniak faces decisions about whether to quit the job he loves at Hewlett-Packard to join Apple Computer, how to define his role within Apple, whether to take on Jobs as his co-founder, whether to accept a third co-founder proposed by Jobs, and how to split equity with his co-founders. Early on, they add an outside investor who changes the company’s trajectory and who brings in a new chief executive. Later, tensions rise between the two founders as their strategic visions diverge and as the company grows. Wozniak has now learned some disturbing news about his co-founder and has to decide whether that news will affect his continuing collaboration with Jobs.”

Core issues:When to leave a comfortable corporate career, Founding with your best friend, Taking on a third co-founder, Shaping a new venture as an (active) outside investor, Growth tensions, Exit issues.