Taking a Risk

Explain how entrepreneurs start businesses.

Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.

What children learn in Level 85

Welcome to World 9, the last world of Grade 5. It carries your history from about 1975 to 2001, right up to the world your family knows. We begin with a kind of person who changes the world: an entrepreneur.
An entrepreneur is a person who takes a risk to start a business. Entrepreneurs see a need, and bring a new good or service to the market.
Here's a made-up story. Maya sees that dog owners want healthy treats. Maya spends savings on supplies, and sells dog biscuits. If people buy them, Maya earns a profit. If not, the money is lost.
Profit is the money left after a business pays its costs. It's the reward for taking the risk. Many new businesses fail, and that's why it's called a risk.
In Georgia, Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank lost their jobs in 1978. They took a risk on a new idea: huge stores with low prices. Their first Home Depot stores opened in Atlanta in 1979, and they lost money at first.
In 1976, two friends in California, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, started a little computer company called Apple. They sold some of their own things to pay for it. You'll soon see what their risk helped start.

Georgia Standards of Excellence in Social Studies:

SS5E3.c — Describe how entrepreneurs take risks to develop new goods and services to start a business.