#57 Recession fears get real
Companies begin reducing staff count
Welcome to another edition of Business News for Kids 🙇♂️.
Busy business this week 💼
Recession 📉 fears get real for companies and startups world over. Big tech co’s Meta, Uber, Twitter and others, put hiring freezes in place with many starting to reduce staff. Indian startups in particular have seen over 8,000 job cuts 😔.
Famed seed investor Y-combinator too sent out a warning ⛔️ to all its portfolio companies (companies in which it has invested), advising them to ‘plan for the worst’ - read it with a big person for some important business lessons. Did you know “More than 260 YC companies are valued at $150M+ and more than 60 companies are valued at $1B+”. 🤯
Investment Banking co Goldman Sachs has cut down growth forecast for China 🇨🇳 to 4% - remember the World Banks’ forecasts of 5%? That 1% amounts to a cool $150 billion drop [FYI China’s 2020 GDP was $14.72 Trillion].
While Ethereum inventor Vitalik Buterin declared he is no longer a billionaire 😱💰📉 - his digital wallet that was valued at a cool $1.5 billion in November is now down below $1bn given price of Ethereum has crashed by more than 55% since, causing the loss 💥.
The only good news, seems to be coming from virtual lands 🗺.. Fortnite has revealed an ultra cool Obi-Wan Kenobi🥋 Star Wars special skin. It goes on sale 26th May - though you might want to hold off buying it [read the Mental Model to know why 😅].
Wait, what is..
Recession: A significant reduction in economic activity or a contraction in the size of a Economy 🔽🔻⤵️. Geek out here.
Hiring Freeze: When companies put a stop to hiring new people.
Valued, GDP, Economy & more Wait, What Glossary.
Woah 😱 Weird 🥴?
While everything seems to be going down.. there is atleast one thing going up, up and away.. Kim Kyu Tae of South Korea flew a paper airplane 🛫 252 feet and 7 inches 🤯, setting a new Guinness World Record 😱. If only the Airline industry too can fly back up to its old laurels - after seeing a 56% drop in market size to $359 billion in 2020.
Inspiring business people to know 🙏
Meet Vitalik Buterin, our inspiring business person of this week.
Vitaly Dmitriyevich Buterin aka Vitalik Buterin is the inventor and co-founder of crypto currency platform Ethereum. A gifted child 🚀 with interest in Mathematics and Coding, Vitalik wrote a paper detailing how Ethereum would work, and in 2014 won a $100,000 grant from the Theil Fellowship to go ahead and build it full time. He also became co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine in 2012, one of the very first publications covering cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. Psst.. the value of all the Ethereum tokens i.e. Ethereum’s Market Cap is a cool $239 billion 🤯🤯🤯. Now imagine creating something that valuable ⚡️. And go on and take baby steps to creating it 🏃♀️🏃🏃♂️.
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BNFK distills the latest, most interesting, Business News 📰 .. to an emoji filled, ultra informative, and fun Newsletter for Kids. Delivered every Sunday. Previous editions here. Forwarding this? Ask them to hit 👇 & subscribe for FREE.
Stocks, stonks and.. ⚡️
Indian e-commerce player PayTM Mall saw it’s valuation drops by >99% 😱🤯 with investors Jack Ma (Alibaba Founder) and Ant Financial (Alibaba’s holding co) exiting the company selling shares for INR 42 crores or ~$5mn - down from the over $3bn value it last raised investments in 2020 ⚡️💥📉.
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!
Utility Maximisation - in the event of a Recession, this ought to be a mental model to fall back on. Utility Maximisation also sometimes referred as Total Utility is an economic theory that talks about how we as consumers like to get maximum value for our spends. Utility i.e. usefulness i.e. value i.e. maximum satisfaction with our purchase.
So if times get tough.. remember to use that pocket money wisely, ensuring utility maximisation :)Tech, products, toys ++ 🤖
Is it a drone? Is it a helicopter 🚁? It’s Wingcopter! Electric drone delivery start up Wingcopter makes drones that can deliver packages totalling 13 pounds, upto 68 miles and just closed a deal to go live in 49 African countries. 👇
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. Please read all Disclaimers.
Take care. See you next week. Pray for Ukraine and for Russian citizens. 🙏