Israel Secondary Fund (ISF): Completing venture capital in the start-up nation

GENEVA (SWITZERLAND), AUGUST 2021. There was a lot at stake for Sébastien. This was the culmination of his 18-month NCA supported search journey to find a company to acquire. Instead of a single target, he was now faced with the prospect of acquiring 4 separate companies at once, consolidating them into a group. One, SAS, was bigger than the others but also faced significant financial issues. Hopefully he had identified three additional companies as acquisition targets, all profitable and with low levels of debt but individually a bit too small. Should he pursue all three as a single deal or add SAS for a four-company deal? In a last-ditch effort to figure out the best deal configuration, he ran some simulations about the potential returns of the group with and without the SAS turnaround. With those projections in hand, it was time to finalize the management buy-in proposal to present to the investment committee the following week.

The case focuses on Rede Mulher Empreendedora (RME), Brazil’s largest support platform for female entrepreneurship, and its founder, Ana Fontes. Founded in 2010, RME had grown into a significant network by 2023, impacting the livelihoods of over 12 million women in Brazil, a country with substantial gender disparities. The platform offers initiatives to empower women economically and provides knowledge and tailored content to help them manage their businesses and navigate Brazil’s entrepreneurial landscape. By 2023, RME was at a critical juncture. Although RME had clear objectives to empower women, there was uncertainty about how each initiative contributed to its mission. Financially, RME experienced a dramatic shift: In 2022, it raised US$6 million, but in 2023, fundraising efforts dropped to US$2.6 million – a 57% decrease. This decline exposed RME’s heavy reliance on corporate philanthropy, from organizations like Google.org, Visa and the Mapfre Foundation, which constituted 80% of its income. The remaining 20% of revenue came from projects funded by RME’s partners, which proved inadequate to sustain the organization’s ambitious goals. Besides, in 2023, the fundraising campaign fell far short of expectations. Reduced funds meant that new projects were postponed, and existing initiatives faced the threat of being scaled back. Fontes must ensure financial sustainability, identify new revenue streams and reduce dependence on philanthropy while staying true to RME´s mission. Her goal is to achieve self-sustainability while continuing to fulfill the mission. This involves analyzing whether RME should pivot to a for-profit enterprise, remain a non-profit or adopt a hybrid approach to balance its social impact with financial viability. Students must put themselves in Ana’s shoes and evaluate the potential benefits and trade-offs of these models to determine the best path forward.

Entrepreneurial families play a vital role in shaping the global economy and society. These families, engaged in creating and managing businesses across generations, share a commitment to long-term growth, wealth preservation, and legacy building.

In the 2010s, card processing – Mastercard’s flagship service – started showing signs of commodification as new, nimble players (typically, fintech startups thriving on digital) entered the payment processing space, and customer preferences evolved beyond plastic cards and traditional contact payments. To re-energize its central position and its ability to capture value, Mastercard – as the incumbent – had to make bold decisions. The case details Mastercard’s approach to conceptualizing and building a global platform ecosystem that upholds the principles and design elements of modularity (i.e. interoperability and scalability) and optionality. Today, Mastercard's services, based on application programming interfaces (APIs), integrate with a variety of platforms and offer flexibility to businesses that require customized payment solutions. All along, the company has accommodated a high level of internal disruption. The case also explores the nature of Mastercard’s systematic collaboration with fintechs – players that often started out as competitors in specific parts of Mastercard’s value chain. It describes the company’s engagement with fintechs as fostering collaboration and co-creation and facilitating access; in other words, opening doors and sharing tools with partners. The case presents observations and quotes by CEO Michael Miebach, whose career trajectory at Mastercard – spanning Africa & Middle East experience, fintech partnerships, product management and the CEO role – sheds additional light on the philosophy and values that have driven the company’s transformation to a technology powerhouse and self-described original fintech.

In July 2024 Guido Preti, La Marzocco’s sustainability manager, was preparing his three-year plan to combine La Marzocco’s ESG program with that of its new owners, the De’Longhi Group. Since its inception in 1927, the company had relentlessly sought to produce the perfect espresso machine through exceptional craftmanship, user centric designs and technology innovation. The company had grown from an artisanal builder of high-end professional coffee machines to a global player selling over 40,000 espresso machines a year to both professionals and consumers around the globe. In December 2023, De’Longhi Group announced the establishment of a global hub for professional coffee machines that brought together La Marzocco and Eversys. One particularly tricky question was how to align La Marzocco’s famed ESG reporting and sustainability program with that of De’Longhi Group while maintaining its best-place-to-work culture.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast is one of the most enduring truisms of management. But is it really the case? And what is culture anyway?

This article explores the rise of activist shareholders and the market reforms that are increasing the attractiveness of Japan for foreign investors as they look beyond China

The total costs of the Swiss healthcare system are rapidly approaching the CHF 100 billion mark per year. Now Switzerland is voting on November 24 on a further reform step. But that will not be enough. New ideas are needed.

Arnold and Frie explore the challenges and opportunities in the European VC landscape.