Wouldn’t it be great if there were a bike-share program here on the Main Line? How about refrigerated organic health food vending machines? Or lime-green food trucks serving Vietnamese cuisine? Wouldn’t that be terrific?

Sure.

But who would conceive of these businesses? And are they even feasible?

Apparently they are, as the students in Char Weigel’s Macroeconomics Honors class proved this past January. Teams of two or three prepared business plans and pitched their concepts to a panel of entrepreneurs and business executives who evaluated them based on their merits. And the students had ten minutes to sell their ideas. “Ten minutes is not a lot of time. But that’s how life is. You have to learn to prioritize,” said Weigel, who herself spent many years in the business world. “It’s the ultimate elevator speech.”

Everything the students learned in class during the first semester was incorporated into their individual projects. “The students had to come up with their own ideas, define their target markets, examine the needs and wants, and look at feasibility. They had to do a cash flow statement. They even figured out how to amortize a loan,” said Weigel.

The business plan project was, at its heart, a group project. Students formed small teams. “When you’re going to do a team project, and kids are going to get a group grade, you have to give them the skills to be effective on a team. It was not just about putting them on a team, but helping them succeed,” noted Weigel. Toward that end, she first asked them to take the Meyers-Briggs, an assessment designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. The Meyers-Briggs profiles gave the students a vocabulary to discuss interpersonal differences in a manner that depersonalized them.

Students were then allocated $50,000 in seed money. It was then up to them to develop a concept. Max Olsan ’14 noted, “You can’t do a lot with $50,000. You can’t start an investment bank. We found that out. So then we tried to find common ground.” Teammate Jimmy Unger ’14 added, “Our idea was to make healthy food convenient and affordable. We both go to gyms and we realized there are no healthy options.” Thus FOHGO, Fresh Organic Healthy On The Go, a refrigerated vending machine food service company, was born.

The students spent a lot of time learning about the markets for their proposed businesses. They accessed business journals, newspapers, and research from Wharton to help them build their knowledge of their chosen industries. They created marketing surveys to obtain feedback and isolate their demographic. Linna Li ’13, who worked on the What the Pho food truck team, commented, “We learned that eating out is more casual than it once was. People like ethnic options. And people want healthy, delicious but inexpensive alternatives. That informed our choice.” Teammate Caitlin McCreight ’13 added, “We wanted to cater to people like ourselves. What do we want? What do we need? We were part of the demographics we’d be targeting.”

Though students were only required to interview one currently-operating firm in the industry, most groups chose to interview several. Zara Sternberg ’13, and Sophie Katz ’13, who conceived of the bike-share company “Chain Reaction,” found themselves at City Hall. “We spoke to people working under Mayor Nutter about transportation issues. We spoke to student leaders at Bryn Mawr College. We even spoke to someone who does maintenance for Lower Merion Police bikes,” said Sophie.

Though the project was an exercise, students proceeded through each phase as though they were actually going to open their businesses. Zara Sternberg noted, “We made agreements with local bike shops to service the bikes, and with Lower Merion Township to support the program. We arranged to rent space from SEPTA for the bike hubs.” In the end, the girls had done such a convincing job that Lower Merion wanted them to implement the bike program.

The students even put their non-profit on Kickstarter, a web-based crowd-sourcing site, and secured $50,000 in theoretical funding commitments from the general public based on the strength of their concept, allowing them to avoid taking a loan out beyond the $50,000 “angel” investment each team was given.

Though the project was challenging, everyone seemed invigorated by what they’d learned. Max Olsan observed, “The whole thing meant more than just a grade to me. We really enjoyed the process. We put in a ton of time to our project—probably 50 hours combined. It was enjoyable. It was never a chore.” Linna echoed Max’s sentiments. “We trusted in this project. We were really devoted.”

And in the end everyone won. “This isn’t the sort of project where there is a winner or a loser,” observed Weigel. “This is not Shark Tank or Trump. I don’t want people to think that this is what it is. It’s not a competition. It’s an opportunity for everyone. It’s about the experience.”