This is Planet MONEY from NPR.
Welcome summer School class of 2023.
We gather today on the imaginary lawn of Planet Money University to celebrate what we have achieved.
You worked hard this summer by pressing play on a podcast, adjusting the volume, occasionally paying attention, and now you are ready to become a master of business administration, spelled without capital letters.
For legal reasons, of course, you will have to pass a short online quiz first.
You can find it in the show notes or@npr.org summerschool.
Answer ten easy questions and you get a diploma like image suitable for putting up on the fridge or in your office if they have a sense of humor.
But I'm gonna be honest with you.
What really matters for an MBA is not that diploma.
Sure, it looks nice on the wall, but what really matters is the confidence.
The confidence to take everything they've learned in business school and stand in front of an investor and ask for money.
That's what the MBA is all about, and that's what we're gonna do on today's graduation episode.
As a treat, we are going to do our own version of Shark Tank.
Five Planet money listeners, one shrewd investor.
I'm excited to hear all of your pitches.
Angela Lee teaches classes on VC venture capital at Columbia Business School.
She's also an investor herself, the founder of 37 Angels, where she's heard 20,000 startup pitches and funded 100 of them.
So I have to ask Angela, do you always know in the first minute or so whether it's worth funding a particular business?
I would say that getting to a no is much faster than getting to a yes.
So there are definitely folks that I talk to when yep, first minute.