Ted Gonder's Miscommunication

Ted Gonder’s story seems to be one of those classic stories of turning nothing into something. He saw that a large amount of youth, especially in poorer areas, lacked knowledge and understand of basic economics and finances. Which isn’t exactly surprising. The old joke is that the American school system will teach you that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, but not how to file your taxes. This is rather unfortunate because economics and finance are probably some of the most applicable and practical things you could learn as a young adult.

This large scale lacking of basic economic information was just amplified by the fact that Ted went to a rather nice college, that was next to these poorer areas. He was studying and learning about advanced investment strategies while a few miles away there were kids that couldn’t make a budget if their life was on the line. It was an extreme juxtaposition that highlighted something unfair. Ted found something that broke his heart, so he decided to do something about it. He worked with some of his classmates to set up a free class on economics for these kids, and eventually managed to convince a principal to let him teach it.

However, …show more content…
It painted a mosaic of a success social operation. It illustrated how he went about solving the problem he saw, and how he learned from it. It gave an example of a successful social entrepreneur, beyond the most commonly mentioned, Muhammad Yunus. Such an intimate and descriptive story of one man’s ambition to change the world, it really fired up my neurons. It taught me the importance of setting up your product or service and getting feedback on your product or service. There is a challenge in understanding and adapting your service around feedback. But a fundamental understanding of your customer and their needs allows you to bring to life that thing that your customer truly needs, and I think that is the most important lesson from the