Case Protagonists
This founder was obsessed with making his company the best place to work.
Who is Matthew Bellow?
This company struggled to decide whether to centralize decision-making power at base camp vs. mountain peaks.
What is Careem?
According to Professor Ghosh, companies tend to scale along this numerical scale.
What is the rule of three?
When firing someone, make sure that person can preserve his or her what?
What is dignity?
This founder is passionate about developing employees by allowing them to create their own opportunities.
Who is Hiromasa Ezoe?
This company found out firsthand that as you scale, Cash is King!
What is BlackBuck?
Economies of scale don't tend to kick in until this many employees.
What is 1,000 employees?
According to Professor Ghosh, a conversation around firing is similar to what event in one's personal life.
What is a break-up?
This founder is known for his view that the discount rate in life is high.
Who is Magnus Olsson?
This case demonstrated the potential pitfalls of very publicly committing an organization to a goal.
What is Yesware?
Edgar Schein describes this as “a pattern of basic assumptions…that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.”
What is an organization's culture?
When you feel as though your nervous system is activated after hearing negative information, you are experiencing this type of response.
What is a threat response?
This founder does not believe equity splits should be a central issue at founding.
Who is Rajesh Yabaji?
For this company, distance (international expansion) makes the heart grow fonder.
What is Recruit?
In Careem, we learned that being focused on outputs instead of inputs leads to this common addiction.
What is a sugar high?
As we saw in Recruit, difficult conversations aren't the only way to achieve targeted turnover. Instead, companies can provide these.
What are exit bonuses?
This co-founder declined two lucrative offers by the firm before finally accepting to join the founding team.
Who is Abdulla Elyas?
This "beautiful" organization found that the McKinsey approach to new market development (start with existing headquarters and move once you have scale) was the wrong way to go.
What is Treatwell?
As a company scales, this metric's dynamics can be the difference between bankruptcy via illiquidity and self-financed growth.
What is net working capital?
Whether outsourcing difficult conversations or having them in person, a company should always be on the right side of this.
What is the law?