#1 Hello
Freeedom Given, WeWork hard at Work, NFT for $69 million
Hello, welcome to the first ‘official’ edition of Business News for Kids (BNFK for short; genius isn’t it?). We’re so excited, and nervous, to be sending this out. But what better time than a new Financial Year to get started with talking about Business.
Wait, what’s a Financial Year?! Read more below in our.. “Wait, what” section 🙂
About BNFK
Knowledge is at the heart of Being. To be more, you must know more.
With this weekly we distill the latest, most interesting, Business News 📰 .. to an emoji filled Newsletter for Kids. A dad 👽 & son 👾 experiment, delivered every Sunday.
If you missed Edition 0 read it here.
If you’re forwarding this to someone (please please do), they can hit this 👇 to subscribe. It’s Free, if you want it to be!
Busy business this week 💼
Freedom given to the Ever Given! The Ever Given has finally been freed from the sand banks of the Suez, also freeing up blocked trade worth $9.6 billion a day. Why is the Suez Canal so important? Read this New York Times article.
This is sort of old news, but gold news. An NFT by Visual Effects & CGI artist Beeple sold for $69 million - the third highest price ever paid for ANY work of art by a living artist. It was purchased by Metakovan aka Vignesh Sundaresan - an Indian crypto enthusiast that lives in Singapore.
Paypal is now allowing its US consumers to make payments for real goods, using cryptocurrencies. They will accept the following crypto currencies Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTE) and Ethereum (ETH).
Substack, the service we use to write these Newsletters to you, just raised its Series B investment of $65 million.
US President Biden announced a $2 Trillion infrastructure investment plan that includes upgrading 20,000 miles of roads & 10,000 bridges. 🎢
Wait, what is..
Financial Year: A Financial year or a Fiscal year is a year through which companies count how much money they make, their profits/losses etc. The year is different to a normal calendar year and starts in some countries from 1st April or 5th April.
Visual Effects / CGI: Any piece of imagery, animation or video graphic that is created on a computer is called CGI or Computer Generated Imagery. Visual Effects are elements of CGI that are manipulated and added to make video games or movies, after a live scene has been enacted. For e.g. scenes in the movie Avatar or the Hulk from the Avengers were created using Visual Effects and CGI.
Going Public 💹 : Most companies begin life as a Private company. This simply means the Shares of the company are not bought and sold freely. When a company says they are going ‘public’ or that they are ‘listing’, this means that they are now making available their shares to be bought and sold by anyone in the public.
SPAC: SPAC or Special Purpose Acquisition Company is a company that does not have its own business operations, products or services; instead its’ created with the sole purpose of acquiring another company. Read more in Stock, Stonks.
Series B investment: A startup takes money from investors over a period of time, at different stages of its life. Each time they raise (take) this money, the money they get gets classified as a “Series”. Series B is typically the 2nd large round of funding for a startup that probably has live customers, and is growing fast📈. There are also Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C and so on. These may carry on till X, Y, or Z till the company either gets acquired or goes public! We’ll cover more about each ‘Series’ as we cover stories of startups in that stage.
Crowdfunding: When a private company raises money from several people. There are specific rules in specific markets on how much a private company can raise from investors in this way. For e.g. the US SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) just increased this limit from $1million to $5 million per year.
Ether or $ETH: Ether or Ethereum or $ETH is the cryptocurrency of the blockchain Ethereum. Discuss ‘what is a blockchain’ with Mom or a big person at home 😬
Weird business 🥴
🖼 Wondering what could have sold for $69 million? It was this image👇. Made up of 5000 ‘everydays’ i.e. over the last 5000 days, or 13.5 years, the artist Beeple, made one graphic art every day, and this collection is what was sold at auction by Christies; and was paid for with 42,329.453 Ethers ($ETH).
🚢 The Ever Given was freed thanks in many ways to the Moon. High tides caused due to a full moon night allowed rescuers to free the stuck ship.
Inspiring business people to know 🙏
So that it’s easy to interconnect information, we try and cover someone thats been in the news or connected to a story in this Newsletter. But because it’s our first official edition we thought we’d dedicate it to none other than.. Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs is the iconic founder of Apple, the maker of iPhones, iPads, and MacBook computers. He passed away in 2011, but is remembered by millions everyday even today. Read more about him here.
Stocks, stonks and.. ⚡️
WeWork, the famed, and sometimes troubled, commercial real estate company that popularised shared office workspaces said it is going public via a SPAC. However its value is down to $9 billion from the once ginormous $47 billion 📉
How does a SPAC listing work? A group of people launch a SPAC and list it (make it public) on a stock exchange; they then look for companies to buy. Once they identify a company that is interested in listing itself, they acquire that company. And because the SPAC is already listed, the company being acquired also automatically becomes public after the acquisition is complete. Discuss with Dad or a big person at home. More on SPACs here.
Creator economy company Gumroad raised $5 million via a Crowdfunding round, in just 12 hours. Creator economy refers typically to individuals that use their “creativity” to make money as individuals than by working in traditional companies and offices. These include Social Media Influencers, Newsletter authors 😅, digital artists and so on.
Coursera, an early education technology (edtech) company, listed at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and popped 36% on IPO day📈, Deliveroo on the other hand listed in London and tanked 30% 📉
Mental models.. whaaaat! 🤯
My dad insisted we put this section in here, even though I protested saying its going to be a while before kids need to apply mental models. Mental models are nothing but ways of thinking, you can use as a framework to take decisions or solve problems. Who knows, they might just be useful!
First Principle Thinking - a way to break down complex problems to its simplest cause and then re-thinking a solution for it. In some ways its like doing a root cause analysis - by asking Why something happens till you reach the 'first' reason or root cause of why something happens. So go on and keep asking 'Wait, but Why!?'😎
Tech, products, toys ++ 🤖
Boston Dynamics, an advanced robotics company, released a new warehouse robot called Stretch. Watch it stretch here 🏗
Microsoft has won a $22 billion deal from the U.S Armed Forces for customising its HoloLens as a heads-up display for combat troops. 🕶
Pro Tip: The magic of learning is in curiosity. Don’t shy away from clicking those hyperlinked texts to read and learn more. We mostly hyperlink to text we have read ourselves to make sure it is safe, but please be aware that comments and ads shown on these pages are beyond our control. We recommend using a kids friendly browser to view the links.
Disclaimers: Please preview, review, and make sure to pass on only that content which you feel is appropriate for your kids. Stocks or cryptocurrencies covered are in no way a recommendation and shared only for news / information purposes. We have near zero expertise on investing, and it’s always good to know that Cryptocurrencies are a highly risky, and even illegal, investment in many markets :)
Thank you so much for reading - Arv 👾 & Dad 👽 - Pls hit share to make someone’s day.
Hi Congratulations!
Am really impressed with the content and the simplicity with which the concepts have been explained. Keep up the good work.