Read the Zeo, Inc. case study on pages 221-233 in the text. Zeo, founded by a group of college friends has developed a new sleep aid technology. Answer these questions:
- What are the advantages/disadvantages of founding a company with friends?
- How did the founders identify and entice stakeholders to join their board of directors?
- Why did the founders seek a new CEO? What was the process they used to select the CEO? If this were you, would you do that or would you want to run the business yourself?
- How did the role of each founder change as the business grew?
- How does a company maintain its culture when it is professionalizing with a large top management team?
Make sure paper body starts with a summary where there is a statement of thesis (overview of the points to be made), continues with a discussion (or specific answers to specific questions), and ends with a conclusion. The five specific questions should be annotated and have specific answers. Please double space—it's easier for the grader to make comments.
All papers should be written in the third person (he, he, it, and they). Make every effort not to shift to second person (you, your) as in, “When starting a company you need money.” Try to avoid shifting to the first person (I, we) as well. It is distracting to the reader and bad style to shift persons in a paper—students often do it in the middle of a sentence.
