Shark Tank is a show about entrepreneurs seeking investments from wealthy venture capitalist (aka the sharks). I saw an episode the other night about a guy that invented a better, faster way to connect a fire hose to a fire hydrant. Long story short one of the sharks made him a deal to buy his business for 1.5 million and gave him guaranteed employment for 3 years at 100K per year. From an outsider looking in this seems like a pretty amazing deal. There is so much stuff that happens behind the scenes that we (the people watching TV) have no clue what actually happens.
One of the sharks kept making “low ball” offers. When the entrepreneurs rejected or countered the shark would go off on how greedy people were. Really? This bothered me – I could tell that the greediest people in that room were the sharks. It was interesting how the conversations progressed and deals were finally sealed.
The most impressive part of the show was the elevator pitches that were presented by the entrepreneurs. No one choked or stumbled over their words – in my opinion the business ideas were convincing and well pitched. It’s kind of interesting how someone could have a really great idea but if it’s not pitched well it would be bound for failure. It’s kind of like have words to a really great song but if you’re a terrible singer you can forget about a record deal…
You're exactly right about pitching. One of the reasons the class has lots of discussion worked into the format. I'd like to hear more from you. You've got a lot of interesting ideas that would add value to the class.
ReplyDeleteBtw, you've picked up the blog thing quite well.