Econ teachers implement project to enhance classroom experience

Last spring, then-senior Jason Li made his television debut with an appearance on “Shark Tank,” a hit show in which contestants pitch their business idea to a group of venture capitalists.

When Li struck a deal with Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran to invest in iReTron (which refurbishes old electronic devices and sells it to interested customers), students watched in astonishment as one of their own peers got $100,000 closer to realizing his dream.

Now, many other students are participating in a version of “Shark Tank” as well. Not on the “big screen,” but in the school’s own Little Theater.

For the first time, the MAP 12 Economics class completed a mock “Shark Tank” project during its business and labor unit. In the simulation, groups of students created their own business proposals and presented them to actual venture capitalists (VCs) from companies such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Intel and Network Appliances. The session took place Oct. 3.

The students involved in the project also created advertisements for their proposals in their English 12 Language MAP classes to encompass the idea of persuasion and propaganda. By doing so, the History and English class curriculums came together to create a more holistic experience for the students, teacher Mike Davey said.

The project itself takes three weeks to complete. In the MAP Economics classes, 10 groups presented to the VCs.

To begin the project, students came up with a business idea. Next the group assigned the roles of Chief Executive Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Finance Officer and Chief Operating Officer to each group member to carry out the tasks to complete the project.

The CMO was in charge of researching the demand for the product and competition for the product. The CFO gathered the information to figure out how much money the group needed to ask the VCs for. The COO looked for materials on how to construct the product and the CEO was in charge of overseeing the group.

Some proposals students made included a glow-in-the-dark ropes course and a sandwich shop in downtown Saratoga named Clubhouse.

“I thought that there needed to be a more practical aspect of economics and since most of our students are going to go into business we thought [this project] would be useful,”  Davey said.

Prior to the current “Shark Tank” project, the MAP Economics classes took part in a mock business contest called JA Future Business Leaders, held at Yahoo! With their fake company named Falcon Enterprises. Davey’s class won this competition.

For this competition, each class formed a Falcon Enterprise with a CTO, a CEO, a president and shareholders, which people were elected for. Every student in the class was a member of the company and took an active role in financing the company, selling stocks and eventually shutting down the company to make enough profits to give to their shareholders. The students did this through creating their own game, Saratogaopoly.

Davey, however, felt that the old project was too large to oversee and scaled down the project to what is now the Shark Tank Project.

“[The new] project is so translatable into what they do in real life,” Davey said. “It’s thinking, listening, writing, reading, reasoning and thinking quickly on your feet when you’re asked difficult questions that you might not even know the answer the to. I have found from student surveys that this is one of the two most valuable things they do during the year.”

Senior Meeta Marathe, whose group proposed to create a glow-in-the-dark rock climbing course, said the project was a positive addition to her first semester. Marathe especially enjoyed pitching an idea to the venture capitalists.

“[The project] put us in a real-life situation with experienced people who have listened to so many product and service pitches in their industries,” Marathe said. “Even though we were all scared of them at first, they really just wanted to help us improve the way that we communicated our business ideas.”

Marathe also said that hearing other groups’ proposals was both informative and fun because every group in the class brought forward an innovative idea.

In addition to each group’s unique pitch, Davey was impressed by the students’ confidence and completion of the project.

“I think this year, across the board, all 10 groups were successful,” Davey said. “It’s very easy to blow up in front of these big people because of the pressure and tension, but everyone presented well and answered [the Sharks’] questions well.”