Real lessons for venture capitalists in multimodal logistics systems : where does profitability come from?

In this thesis we review three case studies in multimodal logistics and transportation systems and analyze the reasons that lead to failure or success. We present the business idea and model of each case study and study the factors that determine revenues and costs, as well as the expectations of the case regarding the evolution of these factors in the future. We observe the ex post behavior of the project and explain which module of the business (revenues, costs, management) performed better or worse than expected. This analysis will help managers, investors and primarily the venture capital industry understand the main reasons of failure or success behind a business story and reveal some hidden factors, which may crucially determine the outcome of the business. We will perform our analysis qualitatively, identifying which part of the model (revenues, costs) had the biggest impact on the divergence between expected profits and what actually happened.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Veniamis, Nikolas Th

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Henry S. Marcus.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/36270

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/36270