Business Commons^™

Standard Licensing Template For University Of Akron Startups, Drew Horton

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In order to facilitate fast, equitable, and effective sublicensing to University of Akron technology startups, spinoffs, and spinouts, an express license was developed. This expresses license was developed by benchmarking existing terms in order to determine market rates. Universities, venture capital firms, and nonprofits were interviewed in order to establish a set of best practice guidelines for the creation of the express license. These results were then tabulated and statistically analyzed in order to determine a series of startup friendly terms that support the University of Akron’s interests. A series of express licenses were then developed from this data. These …

Arclothmasks: A Pandemic Startup Journey, Adam Jackson

Information Systems Undergraduate Honors Theses

Covid-19 changed the way the world operated when it became a pandemic in 2020. The need for personal protection equipment was unexpected and suppliers were not prepared for the demand. The government mandate of masks furthered the need of PPE across the nation. To help fill this shortage, many companies began to retool their manufacturing processes from clothing to masks. This thesis will dive into one PPE company and its journey from the start of the pandemic. The business plan for the company will follow it along with graphs and charts that help tell the tale of the startup.

Strategies For Sourcing Funding For Startup Businesses In Nigeria, Nelly Nwabuisi Adiawari Oburo

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Some small and medium enterprise (SME) owners are challenged with sourcing adequate funds to start and continue in business. Financing SMEs is critical to their owners to ensure they can remain financially viable and continue contributing to Nigeria’s gross domestic product and economic growth. Grounded in the pecking order theory and the financial growth cycle theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies owners of startup SMEs in Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nigeria, can adopt to source funds required to start and sustain a business beyond 5 years. Data were collected through semistructured interviews from …

So, You Want To Be An Entrepreneur: Potential Factors That Lead To Founder And Startup Success, Joshua Robert Tatum

CMC Senior Theses

Throughout the last two decades, entrepreneurship and startup companies have skyrocketed. Adding significant value to the economy, entrepreneurialism has immense power to spark technological and social change in the world. Given the importance of entrepreneurialism, this paper will use a data-driven approach to discover significant factors that influence founder and startup company success. Founding startups is growing easier and becoming more prominent, yet the failure rates of these companies continue to settle around 90%, leaving many companies without the chance to reach their potential and have their full impact. Using a new dataset I have collected, I analyze company and …

Analysis Of The Podcast Industry And Business Growth Of Upside.Fm, Alyson Stoll, Katelyn Stanoch, John Skakun, Samantha Heim, Maanasa Humchad

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper explores the podcast industry with a focus on business related podcasts about entrepreneurship and startup businesses. The paper works to analyze the podcast industry and midwestern startup cities in order to assist podcast company, Upside.fm, in expanding their business model. The two main ideas researched throughout the paper are consumer behaviors in the podcast industry and the entrepreneurial ecosystems of multiple midwestern cities in the U.S including, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Kansas City, Missouri, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Indianapolis, Indiana. For the consumer behavior aspect of the research, a survey was conducted and analyzed to discover what podcast listeners enjoy and …

The High Rise Storage System, Justin H. Harmon

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Factors Of Women-Founded High-Growth Technology Startup, Renee Gillard

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to identify and describe critical startup factors of high-growth technology startups as identified by women founders in Seattle, Washington.

Methodology: This mixed-method study identified and described 15 women founders of high-growth technology startups in Seattle. Participants were chosen based on specific criteria and recommendations of a sponsor and expert panel. Interviews were conducted with the participants and they completed an online survey.

Findings: Ten major findings emerged from the data. Founders fostered a strong network of professional and personal relationships to help develop and solidify their identity; they also …

The Alchemy Of Sustaining New Business Ventures, Alicia R. Hooks

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The high failure rates of new business ventures (NBV) negatively affect employment and potential contributions to the economic health of communities. The high NBV failure rate is essential, as NBV sustainability influences job creation and increases employment rates in communities surrounding the NBV. The purpose of this qualitative single case study, using the effectuation conceptual framework, was to explore strategies organization leaders in the state of Missouri used for sustaining NBV operations beyond 5 years. The sample consisted of 6 NBV consultants from a single Missouri NBV consulting firm who have sustained NBVs beyond 5 years. The 6 NBV consultants …

Business Sustainability Strategies Of Small Technology Companies, Eric Smith

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Each year, almost 12% of small technology companies fail to survive, and the risks associated with high-tech startups are high for business failure due to the introduction of new technology, similar competitor technology, and the short product life cycle of new products. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the business sustainability strategies that some owners of small technology companies used to remain in operation for longer than 5 years. The population for the study was the owners of 5 small technology companies located in the southeast region of the United States. The general systems theory was …

Market-Entry Strategies Of Startup Owners, Evgeny Tsaplin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Russia's startups fail at high rates. The purpose of this multiple case study was to understand the market-entry strategies used by accelerated startup managers to succeed in business longer than the first 3 years. The target population for this study was 3 startup owners who completed an acceleration program from the Internet Initiatives Development Fund and continued to operate businesses that generated revenue. The participants in the study were located in 3 different cities in Russia: Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Tomsk. The conceptual framework for the study was Raheem and Akhuemonkhan's theory of enterprise development and von Bertalanffy's general system …

The Role Of Early Customers In The Venture Creation Process, Maya Kumar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

While startups’ interactions with early potential customers may occur long before product creation, entrepreneurs often fail to recognize how these interactions impact startup development. My research proposes that early customers are central influences and develops a model of customer interactions. More specifically, my dissertation focuses on answering: When and how do startups interact with early customers during the venture creation process, and how do these interactions create path dependence for the type of organization being created?

I undertook an inductive, qualitative process study of nine startups located in incubators and studied customer interactions in near-real-time. My findings show that types …

Do Rio, Barbara Brasil Marcolini

Capstones

Do Rio is a solutions journalism platform for residents of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It consists of a website and Facebook page where Rio de Janeiro’s citizens find inspiring stories of people who found solutions for their city’s problems, exchange ideas about the the challenges Rio faces and take part in events with positive impact. This project was created by Barbara Marcolini at the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism as part of her Master’s in Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY J-School.

Link: http://do-rio.com/

Zeppy Low Calorie Alcoholic Beverages Business Plan, Allison Zeppuhar

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The documentation of a college-level student starting her first company in the alcoholic beverage industry. Allison Zeppuhar created a low calorie alcoholic beverage brand called Zeppy during her junior and senior year of college at James Madison University. This documentation includes an executive summary, a reflection of her findings, her timeline, an entity-relationship diagram, To Be Manufacturing and Customer Order process maps, and a progress journal.

Startup Elsewhere, Michaela Ross

Capstones

Immigrants have made outsized contributions to American innovation and entrepreneurship, but the headwinds they face in the U.S. are now driving them to return to their native countries to startup their tech companies.

U.S. immigrants make up only 13% of the country’s overall population, but they have filed over a quarter of the country’s global patent applications, won a third of America’s Nobel prizes in the sciences in the last hundred years and make up over half of all computer science Ph.D. students in U.S. universities. Immigrants also build businesses at twice the rate of native-born Americans, and over the …

The Effects Of Social Media & Web Development On Product Promotion & The Effects Of Branding On Sales And Building A Startup, Scott Toshiro Burns, Galen Quan Tran

Graphic Communication

The purpose of this study was to identify the key components needed to make a startup. This included created making a landing page and also driving traffic to the page through Facebook. On the landing page section, there was a test to see what would provide the best user experience using Squarespace. This entailed looking into different layouts and using analytics to determine how effective the landing page was in converting customers. In terms of Facebook research, went into looking into creating a method into driving leads into the prospect pipeline. A campaign was run to gather all the data …

Portfolio Company Selection Criteria: Accelerators Vs Venture Capitalists, Cody Chang

CMC Senior Theses

The explosive growth of ‘accelerators’ in the United States has given entrepreneurs and their startups the opportunity to pursue seed-stage financing. While the specific economic role of accelerators remains unclear, a study comparing the selection of portfolio companies between accelerators and venture capitalists was performed. A difference of means was performed on the responses per question between the collected 19 accelerators’ response and the 100 venture capitalists’ response, recorded from a prior study. It is found that venture capitalists place significantly more weight, than accelerators, on the potential of the startup’s product or service to be proprietary, to enter a …

Viral Online Content And The College Market Using Ratemyprofessors.Com And Howstheliving.Com As Case Studies, Aeron L. Glover

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Does Money Matter? Investigating The Financing Of Emerging Firms, Casey Frid

All Dissertations

In this dissertation I investigate start-up financing by nascent entrepreneurs in the United States between 2005 and 2010. By nascent entrepreneur, I mean individuals who are in the process of creating a new business, but the business itself is not yet affecting prices and quantities in the market. Nearly all research on financing has focused on established firms. Little work, however, has been done on how entrepreneurs acquire and use financial resources during the earliest stages of the firm creation process. The availability of financial resources has been linked to firm growth and survivability, and understanding how entrepreneurs use and …