Philip Levinson

Today, Nike is a $100 billion company generating over $30B in yearly revenues and sales to China growing more than 30% annually. Nike is considered the most popular and respected brand in the sports industry – and one of the most valued business brands in the world, ranking ahead of Intel and Mercedes-Benz. But the company’s brand name almost ended up being completely different...

"It's common for students at top business schools to go on class field trips. It's not common for two students to go on a field trip and turn it into a billion-dollar company. But in 2009, two Harvard Business School (HBS) students did just that.

Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn turned their five-day Silicon Valley Immersion trip into CloudFlare, a flagship member of the "unicorn club" with a billion-dollar valuation and over 2 million customers..."

"As Anthemos Georgiades (MBA 2012) finished his first year at HBS in 2011, he reached a conclusion about the online apartment rental marketplace. “I’m British, and when I moved to America to attend HBS, I couldn’t believe how inefficient the rental search and application process was,” he says. “I decided in my second year to try to launch a company to address this.”

And Zumper was born. Three and a half years later, after raising $8.2 million over two rounds of funding from several top… Show more

"As Anthemos Georgiades (MBA 2012) finished his first year at HBS in 2011, he reached a conclusion about the online apartment rental marketplace. “I’m British, and when I moved to America to attend HBS, I couldn’t believe how inefficient the rental search and application process was,” he says. “I decided in my second year to try to launch a company to address this.”

And Zumper was born. Three and a half years later, after raising $8.2 million over two rounds of funding from several top VC firms, Zumper and Anth (as Georgiades is known) have gained great traction. The San Francisco-based company with 18 employees now processes almost 1 million total apartment listings across every top U.S. market, generating over 500,000 consumer apartment searches per month and an annual growth rate of 15X..." Show less

All Silicon Valley entrepreneurs know about The Pivot, the shift a start-up makes when it changes course with its business. Few recent HBS entrepreneurs have pivoted better or more boldly than James Reinhart and Chris Homer (both MBA, 2009) with their venture-backed company ThredUp (www.thredup.com), the leading online children’s clothing exchange.

Rent the Runway now has 2 million members and features dresses by over 150 designers on its website, including prominent designers Diane von Furstenberg, Zac Posen, Helmut Lang, Kate Spade and Hervé Léger. The company, which lets members rent dresses by top-name designers at a fraction of the purchase price, has captured the imagination of its customers and the public, with articles about the company appearing in publications ranging from New York Times and Forbes to Glamour and Teen Vogue.

What exactly is Cloudflare -- this behind-the-scenes, 20-person company that was just named “Most Innovative Network & Internet Technology Company of 2011” by the Wall Street Journal? Conceived by Prince and Zatlyn during their 2nd year Silicon Valley Immersion trip, CloudFlare has been described in a variety of ways. Michael Arrington called the San Francisco-based company “muffler repair for the internet.” TechCrunch called it “a CDN (content delivery network) for the masses.” What exactly is… Show more

What exactly is Cloudflare -- this behind-the-scenes, 20-person company that was just named “Most Innovative Network & Internet Technology Company of 2011” by the Wall Street Journal? Conceived by Prince and Zatlyn during their 2nd year Silicon Valley Immersion trip, CloudFlare has been described in a variety of ways. Michael Arrington called the San Francisco-based company “muffler repair for the internet.” TechCrunch called it “a CDN (content delivery network) for the masses.” What exactly is this behind-the-scenes, 20-person company that was just named “Most Innovative Network & Internet Technology Company of 2011” by the Wall Street Journal? Conceived by Prince and Zatlyn during their 2nd year Silicon Valley Immersion trip, CloudFlare has been described in a variety of ways. Michael Arrington called the San Francisco-based company “muffler repair for the internet.” Techcrunch called it “a CDN (content delivery network) for the masses.” But Prince resists CloudFlare being called a CDN... Show less

Eric Ries, an HBS entrepreneur-in-residence and author of the just-released book THE LEAN STARTUP, recently spoke at HBS and told would-be entrepreneurs to think fast. The author of the popular Startup Lessons Learned blog and co-founder of IMVU preaches the benefits of speed.

“Disruption and uncertainty are the rules now, not the exception,” says Ries. “And so we need management tools designed to confront those uncertainties.”