Download PDF Pre-IPO history The legend goes that the idea for what would become a multibillion-dollar disruptive company originated when its co-founders, Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick, could not manage to find a cab after attending a prestigious tech conference in Paris. Both already successful startup founders, they envisioned a Read more…
Introduction – Disruption in the industry The 2010s were a decade of incredible innovation in the financial industry, putting an enormous amount of pressure on the incumbent players and forcing them to make drastic decisions to survive. The securities brokerage industry was hit particularly high, as modern and affordable challengers Read more…
Lyft inc. [LYFT: NASDAQ] – Market Cap as of 5/4/2019 $21.28bn Introduction On March 29, Lyft – a leading US ride-hailing company – went public on the Nasdaq. Its IPO price settled at the top end of the pricing range, with shares at $72 a piece valuing the company at Read more…
SoftBank Group CO [9984:TSE] – Market Cap as of 26/11/2018 JPY 9.614T Introduction SoftBank group (SBG) is a true believer in WeWork’s idea, with a total combination of debt and equity funding in the loss-making U.S. shared office space provider of $8.4 bn. This month, WeWork received an additional $3bn Read more…
About Square Square is a startup based out of San Francisco that provides Point-of-sale (POS) services across the world. The central premise of Square is to enable small and medium sized businesses to process card based payments at a low and transparent cost. This is achieved through utilizing mobile devices Read more…
Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc.; market cap (as of 09/05/2015): $32.54bn Synageva Biopharma Corp.; market cap (as of 09/05/2015): $7.91bn Introduction On May 6, 2015, Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ALXN), the manufacturer of the world’s single most expensive prescription drug Soliris, and Synageva BioPharma Corp. (NASDAQ:GEVA) have entered into a definitive agreement Read more…
Bitcoin Imagine you could send your money from one part of the world to another in a matter of minutes and without paying outrageous fees to the banks. Bitcoin is an innovative way to do this. It was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 and published as open-source software. Bitcoin Read more…
This week we had the extraordinary opportunity to meet and talk with Sir Michael Moritz, Chairman of Sequoia Capital, who was at Bocconi to talk at the Lectio Inauguralis Rodolfo De Benedetti Chair in Entrepreneurship. Sir Moritz gave us a speech for about an hour, here we summarize the contents Read more…
Venture capital and angel investing have been at the heart of the vibrant entrepreneurial community in the US for decades and have helped create global success stories such as Facebook, Netflix and Tumblr. Growing access to mass communication and fast-paced technological innovation around the world today are spreading the need Read more…
Facebook Inc. Market Cap (28/03/2014): $153.01bn One month ago one social-media user reported on Reddit that he had just seen Mark Zuckerberg on the elevators of a building at 19800 MacArthur Blvd, Irvin (CA), getting off at Oculus VR’s floor. Was the 30 years old billionaire just dropping by, or Read more…