Investors of Tomorrow: What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
The Hyper Team @ Venture Hype | Dec 04, 2009
Are you smarter than a 5th grader? While this phrase has become a wildly popular game and game show, it is also an interesting segue into a recent post in The Business Insider.
Daniel Schultz, DFJ Gotham’s co-founder and managing director, set out to try and explain venture capital to his son’s 5th grade class. To accomplish his goal, Schultz created a presentation of stick figures and clip art to explain how someone might invest in an ice cream startup and make millions within a year.
Schultz’s fictional ice cream company and subsequent success has provided a fun way for students to understand what venture capital is (the one important element missing, of course, was the potential for loss). It’s also shredded lights on exactly why investing might appeal to a number of people.
What Does the Future Hold?
In his column, Mark Davis wrote, “Startups are the fresh blood in our economic system. From a macro-perspective new companies drive growth, create jobs and increase the overall standard of living. They are always the team to be rooting for. As a result, the fact that angels are helping to keep the pipeline of new companies full is important news – news that beats expectations.”
Given that angels play such an important role in our economic future, wouldn’t it be great if schools promote angel investing as a career option? Kids want to be pilots, doctors, and lawyers. Angel investors? Is it something that you do when you’re in heaven?
Investors of Tomorrow
Schultz’s presentation is a great example of how to turn a big boy’s subject into something fun and easy to understand. If kids are given the opportunity to learn the concept of angel investing the way they learn about curing people and representing clients in court, maybe more of them will make a cautious decision to become angel investors when they grow up.
Kids will learn the prerequisites for a typical successful angel: a stomach for risks, a small (preferably large) mountain of cash, and previous entrepreneurial experience backed with a strong rolodex to help portfolio companies succeed.
If they’re keen, great, strive for it. If they know early in the game they don’t have what it takes to be an angel investor, at the very least, there’ll be fewer fools in the future making investments in random startups and causing unnecessary stress and nightmares to themselves and to entrepreneurs.
While we aren’t likely to see any 5th graders at the next investors’ conference, the kids of today are the investors of tomorrow. Adding “angel investors” to the list of career options might not be a bad idea.
Just sayin’.
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Having a few experience in investing in a business is like putting a 5th grader to go through senior high school instantly. A good investor should gain more experience and education to become successful in venturing to this kind of business.
This blog is really interesting as it has prompted us to consider if we should include our kids into the arena of investment and entrepreneurship. I shall love to favor the projected view. Yes, this window should also be opened to our kids and they may find some newer options other than the conventional ones. It cannot be assertively stated that the kids may be able to properly comprehend what does the phrase ‘a stomach for risks’ mean unless they live within such climate. People who grow in the environment of family business have chances to learn from the early life how to take steam of risks.
Absolutely. Generally speaking, you’d have more influence over the company if you invest directly in a startup venture than if you were to invest in the stock market. Of course, you'd need more money to invest in a startup too.
While we don’t expect kids to actually be angel investors — it’d be a little scary to have them on board due to their small business network and lack of operational experience — raising their awareness, and giving them adequate education about this option would only do good to the economy and the startup and investing community.
Absolutely. Generally speaking, you’d have more influence over the company if you invest directly in a startup venture than if you were to invest in the stock market. Of course, you'd need more money to invest in a startup too.
While we don’t expect kids to actually be angel investors — it’d be a little scary to have them on board due to their small business network and lack of operational experience — raising their awareness, and giving them adequate education about this option would only do good to the economy and the startup and investing community.
i think it's an interesting idea. the obvious parallel that comes to mind is kids who want to “play” in the stock market. i've nver been all that keen on that idea because i don't have much (if any) control over the success. with angel investments, you can manage & mitigate the risk by being actively involved in the success of the project
-adam
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