Starting a business

What's in the lesson

1. 1Warm-up
2. 2In this lesson
3. 3Guess the words (1)Vocabulary exercise
4. 4Guess the words (2)Vocabulary exercise
5. 5Check the wordsVocabulary
6. 6Useful phrases: talking about a businessVocabulary
7. 7Check your understandingReading comprehension
8. 8Listen: Camila's cratesListening comprehension
9. 9Use the new wordsVocabulary exercise
10. 10What does it mean?Grammar exercise
11. 11Notice: Marta's postGrammar exercise
12. 12Third and mixed conditionalsGrammar rule
13. 13Choose the right formGrammar exercise
14. 14Hamid's restaurantGrammar exercise
15. 15Build the sentencesGrammar exercise
16. 16Say it naturallySpeaking practice
17. 17The founder interviewSpeaking practice
18. 18Let's discussDiscussion
19. 19Wrap-up

Homework

1. 1Homework: closest meaningVocabulary exercise
2. 2Homework: your sentencesVocabulary exercise
3. 3Homework: fix the conditionalsGrammar exercise
4. 4Homework: looking backDiscussion

Words

• entrepreneur/ˌɑːntrəprəˈnɜːr/

  a person who starts a business and takes the financial risks

• startup/ˈstɑːrtʌp/

  a new, small company, especially one that hopes to grow fast (also: start-up)

• bootstrap/ˈbuːtstræp/

  to start and grow a business with your own money and its first sales, without outside investors

• venture capital/ˌventʃər ˈkæpɪtl/

  money that investment firms put into young companies that could grow fast, in return for part of the company (a venture capital firm)

• stake/steɪk/

  a share of a company that someone owns (a 20% stake)

• break even/ˌbreɪk ˈiːvn/

  to earn as much money as you spend, with no profit and no loss

• take off/ˌteɪk ˈɔːf/

  to suddenly become successful or popular

• turn down/ˌtɜːrn ˈdaʊn/

  to say no to an offer, a request or a person

• pivot/ˈpɪvət/

  to change a business's main product or idea, often after the first one doesn't work

• go public/ˌɡoʊ ˈpʌblɪk/

  to start selling shares in a company on a stock exchange, so that anyone can buy them

Two slides from the lesson

Warm-up

Let's talk about starting a business.

1. Have you ever dreamed of running your own business? What kind?
2. Do you know someone who started a company? How is it going for them?
3. Would you rather work for a large company, a small startup or yourself? Why?

Grammar rule

Third and mixed conditionals

if + had + past participle, would / could / might have + past participle imagines a different past: both parts are about the past, and the opposite really happened. A mixed conditional joins two different times.

Type	if part	result	Example
third: past → past	had + past participle	would / could / might have + past participle	If the courier had arrived on time, we would have shipped the order on Monday.
mixed: past → now	had + past participle	would / could / might + verb	If they hadn't opened a second location in 2022, they wouldn't need a bigger loan now.
mixed: now or always → past	past simple (be: were)	would / could / might have + past participle	If our sales manager didn't speak Korean, we wouldn't have won the Seoul contract.

could = would be able to · might = maybe would. I'd can be I had (If I'd known…) or I would (I'd be…). The if part can come first, with a comma, or second, with no comma.

Time words help: now, today, still and by now show a result in the present; last year, in 2020 and back then show a result in the past.

Not If I would have known…: in careful English, the if part has had + past participle. Write would have (or would've), never would of, even though they sound the same. In the now → past type, careful English uses were for every person; in conversation, many people say was.