Hacker Cinema
Shark Tank
2009 · TV series · 44 min episodes · 18 seasons
Created by Mark Burnett
Aspiring entrepreneurs pitch various business ideas to "The Sharks" -- tough, self-made, multi-millionaire and billionaire tycoons -- in hopes of landing an investment.
12 positive9 negative1 mixed43 neutralfrom 65 commenters
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73 comments on Hacker News
> I'm confused
Clearly. Let me help you, if that is actually possible.
> someone who freely admits they have been broke & unemployed for 15 years feels they are qualified to provide "advice", make critical judgement calls about others, [...]
It's called a "discussion forum." People share their viewpoints freely. (I note that you and your crowd didn't hesitate to jump in with your two cents.) There are no "qualifications" required here; completely unlike the job market for example, there's no special piece of paper from a prestigious institution required before joining up to any given forum and posting one's opinions on the subject at hand.
Welcome to the Internet. You must be new around here.
When a comment is based on decades of experience--especially when that comment is contrary to whatever nonsense the masses of commoners believe, shared freely by a wise man who keeps himself carefully secluded from the riffraff--it's usually worth listening to.
The point is: despite being "broke and unemployed" (which your type falsely believes is some kind of terrible, horrible, no good state to be in), AT LEAST I'M NOT A SLAVE LIKE YOU, son. That would be far worse.
Far from being "miserable" as one person claimed, I'm doing pretty well despite the circumstances. I'm well fed, living in a nice house with significant acreage in a quiet and peaceful area of the country, where pollution and crime are low. No muggings going on here or people shitting on the sidewalk. I get a full night's sleep every night. I'm always healthy and never sick. I don't spend hours commuting or wasting my life away behind a shitty desk in a shitty office somewhere. I do pretty much what I want, when I want. All this is of course completely unlike you, a powerless slave to some employer's dictates, probably living in a shithole city somewhere. Sounds more like the miserable one is you.
Anyone who has escaped from the rat race knows exactly who and what you are. You're the proverbial rat. You're always chasing that carrot at the end of a stick, which is perpetually just out of reach; always running on that hamster wheel but never getting anywhere. By design. And now the IT sector is wrecked and you're probably unemployed, or fearing to God that you will be soon, and your nails are bitten down to the quick as you panic about what to do now. What a sad and wasted life it is, always living in fear, and lashing out at others who try to point out the reality of your situation.
I am a free man. You hate me simply because I remind you every single day by my very existence that your "way of life" SUCKS ASS. That's the bottom line. I don't even have to open my mouth to speak; you don't hate me, you hate the very concept of me.
You cretins try everything in your power to drag me down and shut me up whenever you can. You downvote my posts and flag them, and you hurl petty insults at me--because THAT IS THE ONLY POWER YOU HAVE IN THE WORLD. It allows you to temporarily feel better about your pathetic lot in life, in which you are really completely powerless and at the mercy of your owners.
I meet your type in real life too sometimes, but oddly enough, you never have anything to say to me there. Presumably you just quietly fume in the corner, useless without that downvote or flag button to lean on. I never have to deal with any of the losers IRL that I frequently encounter online and especially on Reddit/HN (but I repeat myself.)
You do not in fact have any kind of power to shut me up, even with all your pathetic downvotes and flags. My comments still remain in the HN database where they will exist forever, despite your sincere wishes, to be judged by others until eternity. If HN servers fail, that's OK. I have my own offline backup copy of all of this that I will be sure to disseminate far and wide. Whose comments do you think will still be appreciated and respected in a hundred years, and who will vanish into obscurity with the other clueless slaves around him? In the end, I get the last word.
I'm starting a business and I know it will be a success. (Sorry, not sorry if this bold statement seems like "arrogance" to you, the insecure little man with zero self-esteem.) Don't you have another couple hundred employment applications to fill out right now, and a bunch of leetcode to practice? The clock is ticking, son, better get on it.
Go lick your new master's shoes and pray he will hire you to be his servant. Your big expensive mortgage and needy wife with fancy tastes are a strong incentive to take whatever crumbs you're offered--and he knows it, which is the #1 reason why (putting all your egotistical bullshit aside) he would much rather deal with you than me. Free spirits need not apply.
Meanwhile I'm on Season 9 of Shark Tank and loving it. (That feeling when you're binge watching a great show and still have many, many more seasons left.) I also spend a lot of time on Anna's Archive just downloading interesting books and reading them. I can even afford to hang with the hoi polloi on HN now and again, though it is truly a waste of time trying to drag people like you kicking and screaming to freedom, which you wholeheartedly reject and fear.
Finally, since I am "posting too fast" for HN's Cyrix 486 server to keep up with (as a result of all the "bad karma" I've just earned from telling you slaves the truth about yourself), here's my response to your other equally idiotic comment, in a two-for-one package just for you at no extra charge:
> programming since you were 8 and created a HN account 16 days ago... seems legit
I'd say "look me up on Slashdot" but you're probably too young to have ever heard of that site.
Thank you, drive through.
In this thread: slaves passive aggressively express their anger at being exposed for what they are, by downvoting the one who speaks truth. Another day on Hacker News.
In a sane country, I would have a hundred employers climbing over each other trying to find ME, the guy who has SKILLS.
In Clown World on the other hand, the guy who has skills has to lick the feet of Real Important, Cool, and Popular People in hopes of being recognized.
I'll stay in the sane country, thanks.
Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to pull a few more racks of ribs, steaks of all kinds, a few hundred bucks worth of hamburger meat, fish, chicken, eggs, cheese, yogurt, bread, crackers, pizza, beer, and coffee out of the Piggly Wiggly dumpster, and stuff it all into my 3 overflowing fridges and freezers. I just cleared some room by making a giant batch of soup (essentially Brunswick stew) in large roasters with all that hamburger meat and frozen veggies I saved up. Think I'll go have a bowl right now, and binge watch some Shark Tank. Enjoy your commute.
This sounds like an episode of "Shark Tank" - If you have $1 mil in orders which will generate a profit of 500k they will fight each other to invest 100k for 40% of your company. If you dont have a full order book and a production pipeline - no bueno.
I can only assume your product didnt fit into the current hype investment bucket (you should have put Ai in the pitch and you would have been funded). LPs in the VC funds want their Blockchain Ai and whatever hype they hear about exposure - the VCs have to deliver it and have it in their portfolio. The investment hype cycle is self reinfocing; as the investment headlines get bigger and the hype gets bigger.
Yep, I was watching old Shark Tank episodes, soon adverts for those products started showing up for my spouse.
> Companies are rushing to go to market with some AI "thing."
That’s our society; Shark Tank is a show all about beating everyone else to fill up store shelves. The product that’s invested in was already on shelves by the time the episode airs.
Behavioral economics driven society rooted in world war propaganda research, gifted to brands and product companies as the military industrial complex was sad it may goto waste and we still had all these factories to run too.
Everyone’s been steeped in the commercial propaganda outputs and seriously ignorant of the last 70 years.
So more Shark Tank episodes? lol
I know. And it seems like every influencer out there is starting their own podcast these days. Information overload.
Tv series is a good idea! What insights would you extract from them?
I can already see myself analysing the mood in shark tank pitches. I wonder if you can create a model to analyze all pitches on shark tank and then come up with its own. That would be cool!
> Breathometer, a breathalyzer that plugged into your smartphone, made “Shark Tank” history. The product earned investment from all five investors on the episode, including Robert Herjavec, Kevin O’Leary, Lori Greiner and Daymond John, in addition to Cuban.
Starting a business to the point of being successful is an outlier. Consistently picking out which of those to invest in is even fut her out.
Well, at least at large scale.
Companies with less ambition (e.g., local mom & pops) might know something the big shot do not?
They are often small margin businesses -- but not necessarily small-margin opportunities. Lots of small business owners make slim profits due to their own lack of business sense or fundamentals. Go watch any episode of Shark Tank to see how little most people know about their own finances.
Well there is entertainment that exists in order to get you spend money on the product itself. Don't mind that, as presumably the goal is to produce great entertainment. But there is entertainment designed to get your spend money on something else (product placement, kids movies that are actually toy advertisements, talk shows that are actually advertisements for whatever the guest is promoting, etc). Those I find quite annoying. The only exception I can think of is the TV show Shark Tank, which has interesting investment dicussions surrounded by countless advertisements for products within the entertainment itself.
So a blog post where the guy teases his next entry -> don't mind. A blog post where the guy constantly intersperses affiliate links with ad copy -> irritating.
First episode of Shark Tank[1] has you covered.
[1] https://sharktanktales.com/ionic-ear-shark-tank-update/
You realize that is highly dramatized and curated?
Annually around 1.5-2 millions patents are granted. How many episodes of Shark Tank has run till now and what subset of the participants had patents on their inventions?
And, how many of those inventors would not get any funding if there was no concept of patents.
Last month I bought a season of Shark Tank on Amazon Prime Video for something like $17.99. I queued up the first episode and I noticed something really wonky about the audio - it was only coming out of one speaker. I thought it was my laptop, so I queued up a different episode from the same season - same result. I tried a different video on Prime Video and it worked fine.
Fast forward three days later and I get email from Amazon out of the blue saying they realized the audio of the episodes in the season were messed up. Not only did they fix the audio problems (the next time I queued up an episode, it was fine), but gave me a full refund. This was totally unsolicited and it blew my mind.
I have attended a few presentations where Phil Dumas, founder of UniKey, described his experience winning an investment on Shark Tank. He explained that there were many unattractive terms in the agreement he received after the recording that made him ultimately decline the investment. My takeaway was that it doesn't matter what happens on the show, the real offer is more complicated.
(I have never seen the show, so I don't know how the offers are described. As an investor, I cannot imagine any offer that can be made verbally in the timespan of a television episode being meaningful.)
I too had a lot of respect for Cuban regarding this.
Article from Inc:
Mark Cuban Made Shark Tank Change Its Contracts After threatening not to return until an equity clause was removed from contestants' contracts, Mark Cuban finally got his way.
Just for appearing on the show, owners agree to give up 5% of their company or 2% of future royalties.
...
Cuban said the clause was removed retroactively, meaning every contestant who's appeared on the show since Season One will be relieved of the commitment. However, how that will work out logistically remains unclear.
https://www.inc.com/will-yakowicz/mark-cuban-forces-shark-tank-to-remove-equity-clause.html
I've watched plenty of Shark Tank episodes to learn/know that yes many retailers don't buy from you. They let you sell in their space, and after they get a hefty cut, they give you your share. And if it doesn't sell, you get it all back. To enhance the blackmail, they ask up front money's for a "better position in the shelves".
Sure. He says it on Shark Tank a lot. In many episodes, Mark rejects the company because the founder isn't good at business (despite their tech) or isn't a tech person but is trying to get into a tech biz.
You've skipped the most important part of the puzzle: Find something people want to pay you for and do that. Think of all the kinds of software and services that you can provide. Pick 3 that you know for a fact that people will pay for. Investigate those further and try to think of an MVP product or service you could offer and how much it would cost.
I also highly recommend YC's Startup School. It helped my startup enormously. And... watch every episode of Shark Tank; there are lots of free lessons from the sharks who've done this many times before.
Outside of SV, thats plenty of money to bootstrap a company. Watch an episode of Shark tank -- there 'investments' typically are in the 100K to 200K for the bigger deals they do and many are less than 50K.
Pleasant surprise to see my post on the front page. I don't mention this in the original reddit post but the nodejs code comes from our 2016-2018 failed startup that at one point was invited to be on the TV show shark tank.
I thought of the same exact video (they got the service for free in return for the video/promo/shout-out).
I have watched most episodes of Shark Tank. I remember than when a 'pitcher' starts with the phrase "XYZ industry is a $$$$ billion business in the U.S., look like an upcoming target for disruption", the sharks start rolling their eyes. That person usually doesn't get the funding.
> As we've reported, Americans are generally moving less
We (the people not living in the USA) think that USA residents buy and sell houses 'frequently'. Buy --> wait --> price goes up --> sell --> buy the next house.
I think that a critical contribution to moving less is the financial crisis 2008-2018 it would make sense that people were stuck to the houses they bought, unable to perform the aforementioned loop, thus moving less.
>Many of McKinsey’s estimates were made by extrapolating from claims made by various startups.
Nobody thought to pause and question whether startups had an incentive to overstate their impact? Watch one episode of Shark Tank and you can see the fault in this methodology
Ya you're probably right. I got the idea watching an episode of Shark Tank where Kevin O'Leary offered to give someone some money with similar terms but at 15% interest because he felt that the contestant needed the money to survive (so it was riskier than usual like a credit card). Luckily they turned down the offer, and the others congratulated them that they made the right choice.
But to me it seems like there are A) a lot of startups that want loans and can't get them (almost all of them) and B) a lot of wealthy people that can't find easy investments that return over 10% interest.
So I wish there was a standard way that angels could co-sign loans (possibly even with some leverage, so maybe they could put down as little as 20% like a down payment) and then those startups could actually build something rather than spending all of their time bootstrapping and consulting to make rent.
I guess I just thought that there might be a hack here that would let banks get into the startup business through existing channels and also let angels get some leverage by potentially putting down less than the total amount they would have given before. Angels would still have the liability of potentially having to pay the whole loan back, but could take on some interest to free up the money for other things in the meantime.
So ya, it's a potentially bad deal for the company, but it's better than the current situation of not being able to get a loan anywhere.
I saw a Shark Tank episode where Chris Sacca described QR codes as the herpes of the Internet. I don't have the same sense of loathing for it that he does, but that phrase stuck in my mind.
I guess most of the alternatives are just as insecure and annoying, or worse. NFC isn't really any better, for instance. Logins and touchscreens are no fun, either.
He's been an investor for quite a while, he even did a few episodes of Shark Tank.
So the 1% fallacy - i.e. "if we could just get 1% of this huge market we will be billionaires!" (ignoring the costs involved).
Basically every other episode of Shark Tank.
I too was also amazed at how easy it was to find pirated TV content via Google having long given up my pirate ways.
I pay for YouTube TV and their DVR messed up and didn't record 1 episode of a TV series.
After exhausting all legal ways to acquire said content, I found numerous links on page 1 and 2 of Google, offering the content with minimal shadiness. The trick was to search for a very specific titles, such as "Shark Tank Season 1 Episode 1" or "Shark Tank S1E1" etc. This filters out all the "general" results. If 37 year old me, years detached from pirating can figure this out in 10 minutes, it's clear Google gives zero f*cks unless compelled (legally) to do so.
Edit: To clarify, the streams were not hosted on YouTube, but rather Google results led me to 3rd party streaming options. This isn't a criticism of Content ID, more Google's policy towards privacy in general.
Dragons' Den is the show that Shark Tank is based on. It has run for many seasons in the UK and Canada (and short runs in Australia and Ireland and elsewhere). Episodes can be found on Youtube.
In turn, Dragon's Den was based on a Japanese show (The Tigers of Money).
If you like Shark Tank, check out The Pitch podcast. It's very similar in concept, but in execution, I like it a lot better:
- It's one pitch per episode, which allows a bit more depth
- It's narrated, which let's the host cut in to explain nuances
- They circle back to find out what happened after the pitch if the investments actually close
- No gimmick companies
- No Kevin O'Leary
Ring was on the TV Show Shark Tank, and all the sharks passed on the deal. It was $700K for 10% of the company. And now it sold for more than 1 billion $.
At some point, Shark Tank could be fun. Someone on Reddit mentioned a similar postcard app and I still need to find and watch that episode.
Right now the plan is to spend as much time as I can talking to customers and improving the product.
I would like to get some local tv media coverage in December. I'll wear a suit and a bowtie and say hi to my Grandparents through the TV. (And bring Andy too if he can swing it.)
shark tank is not a VC, it's a tv show
The founder's response is: "That would be a mistake, because ..."
I don't consider myself a non technical reader, just under educated reader but I would like to respond anyways. I found this site the same way most of my friends have, one of my friends (real friends not Fb friends) sent me a link regarding some cutting edge technology (I believe it was about biohacking) that we previously had a conversation about. There are a few reasons I keep coming back, I like the YC idea of supporting startups, the same reason I watch TV shows like the shark tank, dragons den etc., I like the fact I can sort the news by newest submissions and last and probably most importantly, with all the fake news and rumors, click bait and the like I value the moderated comments section just as you suggested in your question.
The few episodes and clips I have seen of Shark Tank, I always think the deal terms are absolutely terrible for the founders.
What a completely off-base comment. You missed the part where the person claimed that as an insider,
>I worked on Shark Tank. It is a lie (but not unlike almost every other TV show) with just enough truth to keep "suspension of disbelief" aloft.
that is a wildly inaccurate mischaracterization. Your whole comment is off-base because you missed that. No, there is not "just enough truth to keep suspension of disbelief aloft" with the whole thing being a lie.
It's genuine negotiation that reflects real businesses, real talks with investors, and real investment.
There is one fake aspect, which I highlighted: when discussing the valuation, the entrepreneurs don't tell the sharks about the shark tank exposure ("when this airs... ") even though it is a huge point of leverage.
Shark Tank in my estimation is not inherently a lie (except this part). It is heavily edited, obviously.
Use of that word is inappropriate.
Thank you. Look, this is not a place for video editors (in specific), i.e. you're literally on a startup forum. I don't know if you have any experience with startups other than via Shark Tank, but after reviewing after you've written I've come to the conclusion that your calling the show a lie is completely unwarranted, and informed more by your prior experience e.g. "We edited it so that he never came back down and that she was calling her daughter's name... as if they were up there naked or something... That is where the "lie" is most evident." -- but you did not give any examples of anything nearly that bad as regards the deals.
You may not know this, but in normal negotiations with startups, there are many, many meetings involved over a very long period of time. So many deals fall through that there had to be a Handshake protocol invented just to keep VC's to their word - https://www.ycombinator.com/handshake/
"Silicon valley runs on handshake deals." Yeah, due dilligence gets done afterward, not on the spot! Of course all pitches are rehearsed very, very heavily. I mean these are actual businesses that were built for a decade at times, you know?
I think you go way too far writing "with just enough truth to keep 'suspension of disbelief' aloft." These are real businesses that continue whether or not anyone ever films them again. They're actual deals. A lie would be if these businesses (and their sales numbers, etc) were fabricated out of thin air and did not actually exist. Example: Silicon Valley, the show, like Pied Piper. If Pied Piper were presented as reality, and its numbers shown as reality, without even so much as existing - that would be a lie.
The most telling is that you call Mark Cuban, who is by no means a celebrity first and investor second, a "talent". He's not some actor playing a role on Shark Tank.
So I simply am not on board with your original comment that I replied to - it goes too far.
You should have simply said that the interactions were heavily edited, and represent deals that continue after the part that is aired.
A lie would be if an actor were playing the character invented for the "talents" you mentioned, but these people did not exist in real life, were not really business people at all, let alone actual investors investing in startups with real deals, or if the businesses were fabricated.
So after reviewing what you've written I would suggest that you tone it down a bit. I had skype conversations with the businesses shown. My conversations had a startup on the other side - I wasn't talking with some character, like Homer Simpson. They also matched what I saw on screen (more or less, of course, heavily edited.)
These are businesses first, and short shark tank segments only incidentally. They're not lies or fabrications.
The pitches can be shot between 15-60 minutes each. These are ballpark figures, keep in mind, and I am sure that some pitches have taken longer. The point is, there's not enough time to make an informed decision.
Production wants to shoot them as quickly as possible, as they are renting very expensive studio space and paying the talent for every shoot day.
Shark Tank is very efficient as far as TV shows go. Some shows, like Big Brother, shoot 100 minutes for every 1 minute aired. Shark Tank is probably closer to 3-5 minutes shot for every 1 minute aired. It's more like a scripted show in that regard. Certainly, all the pitches are memorized and practiced well in advance.
Someone asked my credentials. I worked on Shark Tank for one season as an editor. I have add'l credits on The Voice and Sarah Palin's Alaska for Mark Burnett Productions. I also worked for 10 other production companies on about 25-30 shows for ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and SHOWTIME. Some of them I don't remember. Some of them I would like to forget, for example, Famous in 12: http://www.tmz.com/category/famous-in-12/
Worked for a company that was on Shark Tank and Beyond the Tank. Its a TV show - its there to entertain viewers and sell ad time not generate funding for businesses. When they filmed BTT, there were narratives that they wanted to push, certain things they wanted to be said, etc. Bottom line, the money my employer got from ST/BTT was dwarfed in comparison to the marketing/PR benefits of just being on the show and working with the Sharks' teams - being associated with the show opens a lot of doors.
I remember seeing an article from the founder of a company that was on ST estimating that the PR/Exposure was probably worth in the ballpark of $3m. I'd agree with that; a random re-run years after the initial episode would still bring in a huge amount of traffic - at no cost to us. I'd estimate we got 3-5 re-runs every quarter.
I'll throw it out there too that there was a huge delay between filming BTT and when the episode aired.
I've only watched a couple of episodes, but it seemed like the deals they offered were pretty terrible. Granted the products weren't great but when the deal is "<paltry sum> for a 51% stake in the company" I was like "Who would take that?" And of course they did.
I guess Shark Tank is where you go when all normal investors have already turned you down.
I worked on Shark Tank. It is a lie (but not unlike almost every other TV show) with just enough truth to keep "suspension of disbelief" aloft. It was designed that way from the beginning. Almost all TV shows are designed this way. The "lie" is called entertainment. The subject of "high stakes" investing is ready-made for TV, but no investor can adequately research a business in the 15 minutes it takes to shoot each pitch.
I think it made sense in just a settlement- 'you want to keep rerunning that episode over a decade after it was recorded and aired, let me at least show "now."' I can see how such a product with such limited circulation could be completely overwhelmed by Shark Tank reruns/promos in marketing even though it's wildly out of date.
So Shark Tank people are definitely real. The sisters who made Coffee-Meets-Bagel were on the show and a friend met them at some startup event in Silicon Valley before their app took off. Also a friend of mine has been on the show as well.
That said, your hypothesis for "TV-Suitable" people isn't far off. A classmate from college went to audition for some reality TV show and basically said the producers look for certain traits such as how dramatic a person is, etc. My friend who's been on Shark Tank is definitely a charming and likeable guy (he's also a genuinely very nice guy).
I'll never participate in Shark Tank.. one of two investors I'd even consider taking an investment from on that show, doesn't even appear in the majority of the episodes. That would be Chris Sacca.. I think he's brilliant.
Wow, the letter of intent thing is kind of depressing. I mean, say what you like about Dragon's Den/Shark Tank esque 'business' TV shows, but that point comes up in almost every episode; a letter of intent is not a deal or contract. But no, a '2 billion dollar' business was rewarding staff for getting these.
And yeah, all the expensive office space, fraternity esque atmosphere, manager posing for photoshoots stuff... it's like the company was set up and run by people who wanted the glamour of running a large company rather than those who wanted to actually make a viable business out of it. The whole thing feels like something you'd read about a dotcom business in the 90s, right before the crash.
No I don't.
As many have pointed out in this thread, the world is full of entrepreneurs who come from very little and make it happen.
To me saying "I have nothing" is just an excuse. Particularly in the US. If you want to make something happen, you can, it will not be handed to you, but you can.
What these studies never look at (because it is virtually impossible) are the massive numbers of businesses that start from "wealth" and fail miserably. I know people who were handed money and had no worries about failing. And, guess what, most of them fail. Why? Frankly, I don't know the exact mechanism. It has to be similar to folks who win the lottery and proceed to implode within a year or two. Or how about actors who make millions to shoot a movie in a few weeks and the best they can do with their lives in between movies is stuff drugs and alcohol into their bodies?
Nah, money may be a factor for some, but if someone doesn't truly want to be an entrepreneur you can throw millions at them and they'll just blow it.
Some of my favorite TV shows are "Kitchen Nightmares" with Gordon Ramsay, "The Profit" with Marcus Lemonis, "Make me a Millionaire Inventor" with George Zaidan and Deanne Bell and, of course, "Shark Tank".
I actually use them as teaching opportunities for my kids. We record episodes, watch them together and have discussions over dinner. The kids are good enough now that they can identify problems and patterns right away. Now we pause episodes and have discussions prior to the conclusions being revealed. The kids are getting a "virtual MBA" before they finish high school, which is great.
A common thread in a number of these shows are people who either inherit their businesses (lots of that in the restaurant show or The Profit) and proceed to run it into the ground. Almost nothing could be a stronger demonstration that money isn't a success factor in entrepreneurship than to see someone quite literally being HANDED a FULL WORKING BUSINESS only to proceed to destroy it. Why? Lack of focus, grit, drive, etc. All the qualities I mentioned in my prior post. I've seen shows where people end-up hundreds of dollars in debt because they simply had no engagement until someone from the outside slapped the shit out of them in a figurative way and got them to actually work on the business.
Money is just another tool, like 3D printer or a laptop. Millions of people have very expensive laptops. Most, from an entrepreneurial perspective, utterly waste them on Facebook and playing games. At the other end of the scale, a true entrepreneur with grit and determination can grab a second hand piece of shit PC, load Linux into it, use a bunch of free tools, learn to code and make something happen.
Entrepreneurship isn't about money.
Check out this snippet from an episode of Shark Tank: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88RoyiKyLmI&t=18m40s
It perfectly personifies the idiocy of SV VCs. The kid comes out in a hoodie with the typical college startup story: "changing the world from our dorm room". He has an app called Scan, a barcode scanner, that makes virtually no money and has already garnered almost $10 million in funding. When the Sharks are skeptical, he lays down the most stereotypical tech kid answer ever: "I have some interviews with investors that look at numbers to make a decision and they miss the boat, and then I have investors who look at me to make the decision." This is supposed to sound noble but it just reveals that SV is so full of idiots afraid that they're going to miss the next Facebook that anyone who comes to them and looks like an apathetic college kid and talks about dorm rooms can get $10 million on completely silly business concepts.
The same applies to Rose. The numbers don't matter, it's about having the visage of a trendy tech whiz. This is apparently enough to convince SV investors to part with tens of millions of dollars. I don't know why I'm not out there trying to cash in on that.
Shark Tank season 5, episode 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHqBFqh-SIY&t=1340
Gut feeling: that's a high revenue for one person. It can be easy to take for granted if the growth took a long time. But just wanted to offer another data point, that my old partner and I only managed about $1500 a month on our best month selling shareware games 15 years ago (this was before app stores, we were high on sites like download.com, but never saw anything approaching exponential growth).
It’s straightforward to make more than that consulting. The catch is that consulting businesses generally have no intrinsic value. Their value is in the workers, so if there are N people and one of them leaves, they’re worth about 1/N less. In other words, the have less resale value than product businesses.
So I would say, if you want your business to be worth something, consider streamlining it to the point where it no longer needs you. The catch to that is that it isn’t something you do while you are still working on your minimum viable product (MVP). So ask yourself:
1) are you still getting established? - then bootstrap, nobody will lend you money other than credit card companies
2) or are you at a point where you have some breathing room? - consider funding from family and friends because even long tail decline can pay them back
3) or is everything in place to the point where you are ready for exponential growth? - raise big money
I started writing a big spiel about brick and mortar stores and getting loans in exchange for a stake in the business but it wasn’t something that couldn’t be gleaned from watching a few episodes of Shark Tank.
The way I see it is, you’re probably still a consultancy, still in phase 1, but on the threshold of phase 2. But congats, because most people never make it that far. So are you familiar enough with promotion and branding to get new business on your own? Or can you find a partner somewhere who is as established as you in some way (having either skills or cash), who will help you rather than hinder you? Or do you have a family friend who has experience running a business and more importantly, has the cash you get you to phase 2 in a short amount of time?
Concretely, it sounds like you need money so you can give your full attention to refactoring and hiring for growth, and you know an angel investor. Don’t hold onto the job. But don’t go and borrow more money than you need either. You’re in a unique position where you could borrow 6 months or a year’s wages without having to work for and save that money yourself (which takes 10 times longer - so if you wanted to save $10,000, you would have to earn $100,000, which most people don’t have the means to do, and that’s the actual thing that stops people from starting their own businesses, not dedication or talent or the things that hackers tell themselves to feel special). As a general rule, a bank might lend you what you have in savings. But an angel investor might lend you a lot more for some percentage of the business. A partner would want half, but maybe there’s a sweet spot where you could borrow more and give up less, because you have enough cashflow to survive on your own without the money. I made the choice to give up my job and go it alone a couple of years ago, but I don’t have 2 kids to support, and now it’s not so much about the money as missing the interaction with smart people. So now ironically having a great team and a sustainable income would be more attractive to me than any amount of money, because the sky would be the limit. Maybe thinking about what you really want, and accepting that you’re being given a special opportunity rather than merely weighing risks, will help you decide how to proceed. Good luck!
I always torrent. I usually always find what I'm looking for the day it goes on air (new TV shows like Shark Tank).
Oh really? "Heavily favors attractive women particularly those with blond hair"?
http://abc.go.com/shows/shark-tank/episode-guide?category=Season+4&displayall=1
http://abc.go.com/shows/shark-tank/episode-guide?category=Season+3&displayall=1
http://abc.go.com/shows/shark-tank/episode-guide?category=Season+2&displayall=1
http://abc.go.com/shows/shark-tank/episode-guide?category=Season+1&displayall=1
Looks the usual to me - mostly white guys, that is.
Recently, the I Love Marketing podcast had an hour discussion with former-Shark Kevin Harrington:
http://ilovemarketing.com/episode-118-the-one-with-kevin-harrington/
Harrington details why he left the show, mainly because all the little deals were sucking his time and it would be a full time, low return occupation managing them. Apparently Barbara Corcoran now does nothing other than tend to her Shark Tank flock.
Before seeing Cuban on the show, I really didn't like him much. I had read things by him and heard things. It was all just impressions. I've watched (with my son) every episode of Shark Tank. He is now my favorite investor on the show. By far.
I remember on one show it went off on a guest for their having a patent on something stupid. Cuban went on a tirade about patents and it really warmed my heart.
A show like this really needs someone like Mark Cuban in a very strong position as the equivalent of a creative director. The reality TV people could be good at turning whatever goes on into a good episode (or using enough nasty tricks to keep you watching for the next 5 minutes). To be a great show they need great material. In this case, that means the best companies need to want to pitch. The deals need to be envied by other investors. That's hard to manufacture and it probably won't be achieved unless someone like Mark Cuban is making it happen. A TV producer thinking from the perspective of shots & scenes & backstory shouldn't be making any decisions about deal terms.
Exhibitionist fundraising might actually work if the deal terms were acceptable and your intended market happened to watch Shark Tank. Imagine square raised-launched on this kind of show.
This is also interesting that he waited to push for this until now.
It just goes to show that no matter how rich you are, you have to understand your value. If he had pushed for this change in Season 1 - which I suspect he may have - he probably didn't get anywhere because the show could always replace him.
Now that he has become synonymous with Shark Tank, he has much more leverage, along with the fact that maybe this clause has increasingly become an issue for companies.
I love this. Never knew this was a clause...glad he pushed for this.
Mark really does seem like a stand up guy.
Shark Tank sounds kinda 'fluffy' and I never paid it much attention for the first few seasons - but then I heard about a company that pitched and I was intrigued so I was searching through the episodes of one of the earlier seasons and I realized how awesome the show is.
It is amazing to watch and see how quick the Sharks can sniff out vagaries of a deal - e.g. if an entrepreneur raised money before at some crazy price, or the cap table looks very weird, or the company was loaded up with debt. They always seem to get to that pretty quickly.
I wonder if that is because they (the show) do due diligence on each company before they reach the sharks and the sharks have notes about what to ask for.
Either way, I am always surprised by the quality of the pitches shown. Some are lame, but some are surprisingly good with solid business and likely solid growth prospects.
As a general rule, their instincts tend to be pretty spot-on - it seems.
I have to disagree with this. I've watched every episode of Shark Tank, and many of the businesses are in highly competitive markets and do not have any fundamental competitive advantage. 10 times profit is actually a really good valuation.
Investing at a 10 times profit in a small company is a highly risky investment. You are gambling that the company will be: a) ethical b) continue to operate for enough years to pay you back c) If they stay the same then after tax it will take 15 years to pay back the investor assuming that all the profit goes to paying back the investor which is highly unlikely.
Potential growth is the upside that you are looking for but it's certainly not at all guaranteed, and the opposite is also possible (negative 100% growth, or company being worth nothing).
I'm so glad other people noticed this. They did it quite a few times in recent episodes with the T-Mobile phone. Another episode it was used was when Robert Herjavec visited a past invested project (where they show the "how they are doing now" segment) and they exchanged a document by holding the two T-Mobile phones back to back, and then proceeded to say some cheesy line. I typically love the show, Shark Tank, but the recent blatant product placement is starting to rub me the wrong way about the shows integrity, and the people coming on the shows.
Also, slightly more off-topic, but is anyone else annoyed with the recent emotional break-downs on the show that, in a few cases, led to getting investments over the person awkwardly crying and/or having a break-down? It was also more obvious it was only cause of the break-down (it seemed) because on one of the instances everyone was "Out", but then a "Shark" came back in after the break-down. It's starting to feel too much like a reality show to me, as of this season. Which disappoints me, because the show used to be one of my favorites.
"The company made $100k in profit in six months. Yet they only asked for $150k. What could they do with $250k in capital that they couldn’t do with the $100k that they already had? And if they waited another six months"
What could they do? It's not the money.
I consulted for someone who was on Shark Tank and got funded.
The reason you go on Shark Tank is:
a) You get national publicity and that national publicity gets you sales as well as all sort of attention. In the particular case that I am familiar with, sales increased 3 to 5x iirc. And that national publicity opens doors with companies and individuals in the business world. (We aren't talking about being featured on Techcrunch here - big deal.)
b) The Sharks really do have contacts, real world contacts, and do and did seal deals and get the particular product in question national distribution. Just like that.
Of course you try to make the best deal you can it is almost a sure bet given the right product and fit with the right Shark (which is generally taken care of by the Shark since they don't put money into what they don't know about or can't help with.)
And when you get a shot at being on a TV show with a national audience, you don't wait 9 months and hope you get picked for the next season. You jump at the opportunity. Even if you don't get funded the publicity alone is a no brainer.
It's funny how the conversation is confined to salary potential and government handouts. There is a bigger issue afoot that taints the Canadian IT scene - that is the utter lack of supporting commercial infrastructure. Years of anti small business provincial and federal governments, a pariah lackluster VC sector who's biggest claim to fame is inspring the cynical tv series Dragon's Den/Shark Tank (this is pathetic coming from Canada where there is no investment sector) and an academic sector that is devastatingly irrelevant. Compare to other countries of comparable size/GDP and Canada comes out smelling like a turd - ya I live here and ya I have three startups under my belt. Hmmm, government welfare or an entrepreneur's paradise. That's a tough one.
I remember watching Shark Tank a while ago and one of the pitches was perfect fitting jeans. The idea seems quite similar (but for jeans). The investors didn't really think it was viable due to the turn-around time (if I remember correctly).
Edit: It was actually Dragons Den (Season 2 Ep 6 I think)
Someone has already started to commercialize this. I saw it on "Shark Tank" on TV. I don't remember which episode it was.
Well it's a Shark Tank, right? Most of the companies are jokes anyways. The ones that are the hits are getting "free" publicity. ABC often revisit success stories in their consecutive episodes. I love the show as it gives some insights on how successful people invest: revenue, patents, dedication, etc.
I heard about Shark Tank here on Hacker News. I grabbed a couple episodes and I was hooked.
More than anything -- watch for the patterns of investments the sharks make. Consistently, they love companies that have done all the early groundwork and are making a profit of ~$100k-$250k in the last year.
Also, if you are a hacker and also a fan of Mark Cuban, catch seasons two and three. He's a ton of fun to watch!
I've been a huge fan of this show since I caught about 2 episodes of the Canadian version years ago. I was glad to see Shark Tanke come to america. On the wikipedia page you can find that the show has been licensed around the world and varies in name by country (e.g.: Tigers Den, Shark Den, Shark Tank, Dragons Den, etc.) and originated in Japan.
The thing is, I can't find any way to watch the BBC or the Canadian versions online.
I can VPN to most countries so its not the geographic restrictions so much as it doesn't seem there's a HULU in every country.
Any suggestions for how or more importantly where to watch the UK or Canadian versions of this show? Maybe Australian even? Or singapore? Hong Kong? (just listing all the english speaking countries that might have produced it.)
I watched a few episodes of Shark Tank and thought to myself "I can't imagine all of those deals actually go through." I'm really glad altucher actually researched some of the deals that fell through, and reported it for us to see. It's really important to be reminded not to treat money like it's real until it literally shows up in your bank account. I've known people to get into big trouble by failing to observe that principle.
Shark Tank is American remake of Dragon's Den.
I highly recommend BBC version ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/ ) as it deals quite a bit with valuation and is more serious. After success of BBC Dragons Den there have been few BBC offshots: Dragons Den Online (shorter pitches); Dragons Den - What happened later (recap of pitches and where entrepreneurs are year later); Dragons Den Around the world (recap of how other tv stations do Dragons Den). Less than half of the pitches get any traction.
After watching the UK I found Canadian edition (available to watch at cbc.ca) a bit over the top. The valuation and money exchanged were much higher. The cool think in Canadian edition is Bret, who is either a VC or philanthropist depending on his mood. CBC also produced couple episodes showing how dragons grew to the riches that they have now. What were their roots, and where did they start. Less than half of the pitches get any traction.
Shark Tank in comparison is crazy as it tries to show: American Dream can be made with a little help of Seed money. Most pitches are good, no fumbles, no crazy valuations, no crazy people. As if 75% to 100% of pitches were made to deals.
I can't say much on Irish or Australian Dragon's Den, those are quite tricky to find. I saw parts of Australian Dragon's Den on a special BBC edition of Dragon's Den around the world.
Being of Slavic origins I tried watching the Czech edition (called 'd den' http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/program/dend click videoarchive) but found business terms tricker to grasp. The new season comes with subtitles so I will renew an attempt to watch it.
Poland started doing own dragons den this spring. There are clips of it on youtube as part of original marketing. From what I read, the show was a hit, and they want another season within next 6 months.
i was offered a role on Shark Tank season 2. turned it down.
they wanted something retarded like 3% of my company or 5% of annual profits.
The TV show Shark Tank wanted to feature me and my company http://www.AwesomenessReminders.com. However, in addition to whatever the "shark" investors on the show demanded, ABC/Mark Burnett Productions wanted 2% equity in my company or 5% of annual profits (their choice, to be exercised whenever) in exchange for featuring me on ABC. I declined.
(I spoke with the guys from another company featured on the show; they said traffic doubled with the on-air mention, and then reverted to normal the next day. Totally not worth it...)
I like the idea. I don't like your Flash player though.
The American version is called Shark Tank and I remember spending a night watching the episodes on Hulu. I loved seeing the ideas, the "sharks" interacting with the entrepreneurs (and among themselves), and the financial negotiation involved. And yes, I'm guilty of liking the dramatics, too.
A Silicon Valley version with technology-based startups pitching to real VC's who could invest would definitely appeal to the HN audience.
BTW, there was even a redditor that unsuccessfully pitched an idea on their show. (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/aq2p2/im_going_to_be_on_a_us_reality_tv_show_tonight/)
Is this the same company that was featured as a start-up in an episode of ABC's Shark Tank several months ago?
I don't know how popular it is, but I've faced it. I now only tend to associate with people in the lifestyle or who have aspirations to work for themselves anyway.
I'm guessing it's a lot less common nowadays, though, simply because entrepreneurship and business have become "cool" thanks to the popularity of the Internet and TV shows like Dragon's Den (Shark Tank, to those of you in the US) and The Apprentice. In the last 90s, though, when I first became self employed, people did react a bit weirdly!
The article seems to contradict itself; Shark Tank gave them a $270K pre after they "walked away with $500K in investments" at the end of the Summer? Maybe they meant all investor owned equity is now 25%?
Notehall.com, one of 10 ventures chosen to participate in the three-month summer program, walked away with about $500,000 in investments. ... Through the show, which aired Notehall.com's episode last week, Mr. Conway landed the company an additional $90,000 after agreeing to give up a 25% equity stake
Yeah, but I've already read all of those twice ;)
I think it's interesting to see how quickly the investors try to flip the deal around to be extremely in their favor. Only a few founders have been able to talk them back to reality but when they do it's awesome to watch.
The element bar guy in the latest episode is a great example this is a short clip of him but the whole episode is available too. http://www.hulu.com/watch/95380/shark-tank-power-and-ambition