Many highschools and colleges fail to offer courses about investing. This leads students to be uncomfortable with the idea of investing in the stock market. This is a problem because investing money at a young age can have tremendous benefits. The highschools and colleges have a need to provide their students with more a more practical curriculum. If the students knew more about investing, it would benefit the students and the school. The students would be more comfortable with investing, which would make them more successful. This increased financial success would lead to more alumni donations to the school.
- The forces that have created this opportunity are economic forces. The potential upside of investing has made investing a very useful skill for all people.
- This market exists across the United States in high schools and colleges of all sorts.
- Customers (schools) are currently neglecting this need in favor of a more historical curriculum.
- This opportunity is very big because the majority of schools do not teach their students about investing.
- This window of opportunity will be open until schools begin teaching their students about investing, which will likely take decades.
Innovation
My plan to solve this issue is to create a curriculum that can be sold to both highschools and colleges. This curriculum would teach young adults how to invest their money through two different teaching methods. The first method is through an e-textbook. I would put together a panel of experienced investors and equity professors to create an up to date textbook outlining topics such as:
- What age you should be when you start investing
- How much capital you need to start investing
- What different applications and websites you can use to start investing
- How to find indicators for each stock
- What indicators you should take into account the most when choosing a stock to trade
- How risky you should be when making a portfolio
- When to sell a stock
The second part of my curriculum would be the use of a paper trading platform. Paper trading is a method of using fake money in the real stock market. This would allow students to get real experience with investing without taking on any of the potential risks. I will make money by charging high schools and colleges $2,000 for each semester they use my curriculum. This would give their students access to the e-textbook and paper trading platform. If I got 100 schools to adopt my curriculum for 5 years, that would result in $2,000,000 in revenue.
Venture Concept
My business plan will directly address the problem at hand. If highschools buy my curriculum, students will learn how to invest at a young age. This will give them a very valuable skill heading into adulthood. If they know how to invest they will have a much higher chance of being financially stable. In addition to this, having financially stable students/alumni will benefit the schools because it will result in more donations. Highschools and colleges will want to buy this curriculum because they care about their students and they want them to be successful. It may be difficult to get schools to switch because they have taught many of the same courses for decades. However, there are no major competitors for my business it is mostly untapped. I will not have to worry much about packaging or customer service but my price point will be important. It needs to be the perfect price so that schools will buy it and I will make a profit. The only employees i would need for my business would be those I hire to create the e-textbook. I would personally go to schools and try to sell them on the curriculum.
My biggest resource is my passion about this topic. Many others are more knowledgable than me about investing but they haven't cared enough about young adults to penetrate this market. I think I am unique in this aspect and it shows in the lack of schools that teach investing to their students.
The next project for my venture would be to create an intermediate investor course that individuals could buy online. After school's adopt my curriculum there will be a drastic increase in intermediate investors. This new course would allow them to continue their journey to becoming an advanced investor.
Assuming this plan goes well, I would continue my mission to teach others about investing through a variety of methods. I would create more courses, further develop my website, and possibly make a youtube channel. This first project would give me a reputation in the industry and would give me a good basis of knowledge on how to sell.
Hi again Sean! There is a clear need for the teaching of financial literacy in schools at all levels. Common core here in Florida and other state and federal standards just don’t prioritize this issue; so, you may come across some challenges in selling this curriculum. There simply is not enough space or time to learn everything, and the basics, such as English and Mathematics, tend to come first. I, therefore, advise you to consider selling your curriculum directly to consumers, rather than schools, as it might turn out more fruitful.
ReplyDeleteSean, I really like your idea of creating an investment course for schools. I think that a lot of what is taught in high schools today is not as pertinent knowledge as what it should be. For your venture I think there is a huge opportunity since there really isnt much offered at the time similar to what you are proposing. Additionally I believe that many schools would pick this up since learning about investing is a very valuable skill to have that many people do not get properly educated on.
ReplyDelete