Here in Holland (and in many other countries) we have a series of reality television programmes called “Dragon’s Den“, featuring ‘wannabe’ entrepreneurs pitching their business ideas in order to secure investment finance from a panel of venture capitalists.
It is quite a fun format: the contestants always (think they) have a very profitable business idea, but just lack funding (one can wonder why).
So they pitch their idea to five (very) rich, successful entrepreneurs: aka the “dragons”. Before each show the contestants name an amount of money that they need to get, and the rules are that if they do not raise at least that amount from the dragons, they get nothing. In return, the contestant give the dragons who participate in their business idea, a percentage of the (new) company’s stock. Off course the exact number of shares is usually a difficult point during negotiations.
The fun part obviously is the presentation of the idea by the participants and the resulting questions or remarks they get from the Dragons, as this many times reveals an embarrassing lack of preparation or uncovers troubling facts and or big holes in the business plan, and as a result in rejecting the investment.
Anyway: someone probably asked the question: what if Steve Jobs had to pitch his iPad idea in the Dragon’ Den?
Well, here is what could have happened 🙂