Forum
THE YEAR OF THE RED UNICORNS
10-08-2019This report was written by Alexandra Albers-Schoenberg, Research Associate at the INSEAD Global Private Equity Initiative (GPEI), with input from Ian Potter, Distinguished Fellow at GPEI, and under the guidance of Claudia Zeisberger, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at INSEAD. China’s venture capital (VC) sector has moved into the fast lane. For the first […]
MANAGEMENT
10-05-2019SERVICES Zara’s hometown upskills to cater to high-end workers After avoiding the worst of a recession, A Coruna flourishes, thanks to demand for top amenities Bloomberg The hipsters of Inditex gave Miguel Lamas a helping hand when he opened his barbershop in A Coruna, on the northwestern tip of Spain, at the height of the […]
Y Combinator Accelerates the Hunt for Unicorns
10-05-2019Claudia Zeisberger, INSEAD Senior Affiliate Professor of Entrepreneurship & Family Enterprise | July 17, 2019 Faced with increasing competition, the leading accelerator is making start-up know-how widely available as it searches for the next Airbnb. Last summer, Y Combinator (YC), the original start-up accelerator that has invested in more than 2,000 fledgling firms with a […]
Getting Rid of Gender Bias in Venture Capital
10-05-2019Monisha Varadan (INSEAD MBA ‘10D), Partner, Zephyr Ventures; Kamal Hassan (INSEAD MBA ‘93D), Founding Partner, Loyal VC; and Claudia Zeisberger, INSEAD Senior Affiliate Professor of Entrepreneurship & Family Enterprise | August 12, 2019 The gender gap in VC doesn’t merely reflect society’s sexism. It’s an alarm bell, warning of an industry’s obsolescence. A headline-grabbing statistic […]
Measuring Private Equity Fund Performance
05-01-2019This background note was written by Alexandra Albers-Schoenberg, Associate Director at INSEAD’s Global Private Equity Initiative (GPEI), under the supervision of Claudia Zeisberger, Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD and Academic Director of the GPEI. We wish to thank Michael Prahl and Bowen White, both INSEAD alumni, for their significant input prior to completion of this […]
The Emergence of Long-Term Capital in Private Equity
06-01-2018This independent study project was authored by Kyle Lee and Konstantin Synetos (INSEAD MBA Candidates, Class of July 2018) under the supervision of Claudia Zeisberger, Senior Affiliate Professor of Decision Sciences and Entrepreneurship & Family Enterprise at INSEAD and Academic Director of its Global Private Equity Initiative (GPEI). Abstract Private equity, or PE, in short, […]
Will Late-Stage Venture Funding Pay Off?
09-09-2017It is uncertain whether private investors will capture the value they expect from tech unicorns. Uber, Didi Chuxing, Airbnb… these names immediately evoke images of unicorns, warchests and disruption, as well as reflect the 14x growth in annual venture capital investment since the 1990s. But they also call to mind a more cautionary image in […]
Private Secondary Markets: A Growing Investment Opportunity
06-13-2017Tech companies want to stay private for longer, driving interest and liquidity in secondary markets. Facebook changed the way many investors access the tech market. The company’s rapid revenue growth, its ability to raise unprecedented amounts of private capital at attractive valuations and its ability to defer its IPO filing sparked a vibrant secondary market […]
The Stars Are Aligning for Socially Responsible Investing
06-13-2017Calls for a more inclusive style of capitalism are boosting a budding industry. On the face of it, 2016 was a tough year in the financial markets in general and for socially responsible investors in particular. Returns to active managers in both the public and private markets generally lagged behind the major benchmarks and, in […]
Operational Improvement the Private Equity Way
06-14-2017The private equity approach to operational improvement is selective and takes place in phases. “Operational improvement” is a much hailed significant source of value creation by private equity (PE) firms in PE-backed companies. Although operational improvement can immediately be understood as a process of making a business run more efficiently, what it actually involves is […]