Assignment consists of two parts: a 1000-word case study followed by a
500-word
discussion.
For the case study part, students should choose either a current or former
‘unicorn’ firm (i.e. acompany that has – currently or previously – reached a
valuation in excess of $1 billion USD). A list of these may be found online.
[NB. Do not choose these unicorns: AirBNB, BrewDog, ByteDance, Gymshark,
SpaceX, Spotify, and Uber; selecting any of these will result in a 10%
deduction in marks.]
1000 words:
The case study should cover the following items:
• A brief explanation of the company’s
background (i.e. context)
• The main business model of the company
• The funding and industry environment in which
the company operates
• The funding history of the company: sources
of capital, funding rounds, exit strategy, etc.
• If the company has not reached ‘unicorn’
status recently, what happened after reaching that valuation
400 words:
For the discussion part, students should critically discuss the case study
and its implications,
drawing upon concepts discussed in the module. This can include:
• How key theories, principles, and concepts
discussed in the module (i.e. pecking order
hypothesis, information asymmetries, principal agent theory, etc) relate
to the case.
• The implications of the case for
theory/academics, for managers, and/or for policymakers
• The role of the public sector in directly or indirectly supporting the
firm.
Key Theories/ Concepts are:
-Priciple Agent Theory
• Focuses on relationship between any two parties: the principal and the agent
– The principal does something which benefits the agent, but the principal expects a payback
• However, there is a problem: The principal has limited control of or knowledge of the actions of the agent, and the agent may have objectives different from those of the principal
-Information Asymmetries
•Information is unequally shared among the parties
–Typically favouring smaller firms
•Information asymmetries can cause market failures and increased
costs for both firms and investors
• When information asymmetries are present banks, for instance, will
overcome these by collecting more information (e.g. credit scoring)
-Information and Information Opacity
The availability of information is key to the functioning of markets
– Share prices are based upon the availability of information(e.g. insider trading)
• Large firms are valued using lots of information
• Small firms have much less information available
• Consequently the small business marketplace is filled with ‘information opacity’ (Berger and Udell 1998)
– Some information is available but it is very imperfect
How the case
study should look like:
This is a very-well developed report which is excellent work. It is very
well-structured and presented. It uses relevant headings and there are
an excellent link and flow between sections and paragraphs. The work
demonstrates an excellent understanding of concepts discussed in the
module. It draws effectively on relevant concepts to analyse the case
company, which demonstrates an awareness of the nuances and
assumptions of the assignment. It is filled with very well-reasoned
analysis from the perspective of entrepreneurial finance. The company
is well selected. The work provides very strong evidence to support its
analysis using academic and non-academic resources (newspaper
articles; webpage contents, etc.). Referencing (including in-text
citations) is consistently applied across the document without an error.
A reference
list is presented in a professional way.
Make sure the case study is well presented with everything covered with discussion part as well and. refrenced.
