Foldio - A cool way to teach Venture Capital

I also did this today with my Year 12’s.

After a bit of ‘teacher talk’ on what venture capital is, I showed the students a 10 minute clip from Dragons Den, the Foldio.

Gave them all a mini-whiteboard I did, asked them to write down the benefits to Christian (the guy who came up with the idea) of venture capital and the drawbacks in this instance.

We then discussed what the students thought.

If you havent seen this clip, make sure you give it a whirl (link above). He ends up giving away 35% of his business instead of the original 15%. Theo comes up with some corkers. I will mentor you, support you, bring your product to market quicker than everyone else, all for 35%!

One of my students even said that they thought Theo may exert to much influence on Christian, reducing his independence and steering the business in other directions.

Anyway, Christian takes the bait, hook, line and sinker.

I then put the kids into small groups and asked them to answer a simple question. Did Christian make the right decision?

Then, for a homework, due in this Monday, I gave them:

To what extent was Christian right in accepting the £80,000 venture capital from Theo (15)

Pure application, analysis and evaluation.

Job done…....................