Case study

For the Case Study Paper, you will select a sustainably-focused startup company to evaluate. One place to find these companies is the “portfolio” section of a venture capital firm’s website.
Another is media companies that focus on startups, such as Tech Crunch (https://techcrunch.com/), Fast Company (https://www.fastcompany.com/impact), or Entrepreneur (https://www.entrepreneur.com/).

The case study paper should contain four main elements:
1. A breakdown of the company’s product / service, its value proposition, and unique selling position.

2. An analysis of the overall market size and growth, as well as your interpretation of the segment of the market that the company is able to service in its current form (this is unlikely to be publicly available information, so you must make an estimate and state the assumptions that went into getting there).

3. A view of the competitive landscape, listing at least two other companies targeting the same customers with a similar value proposition, and a brief discussion of the company’s strengths (competitive advantage) and weaknesses (competitive disadvantage) with respect to its competition.

4. A forward looking discussion of how the business can improve its triple bottom line. There isn’t so much a “right” or “wrong” answer here since you are not a subject matter expert, but you will need to support your hypothesis (e.g. “by introducing this product feature the company will be able to capture additional market share in this way based on comparable growth in this related industry” or “the company likely has high cost of manufacturing for this reason, and would be able to cut costs by doing this” or “partnering with this other company or community organization will solidify their social good credentials in a manner that accomplishes this key sustainability metric”).

Please cite your sources where appropriate.