RAJ27

Here comes some crappy business ideas.....

SD

The end guy was superb. What a position to be in!!! I knew from the second he finished he'd clinched it. He was excellently prepared, knew his numbers and stood his ground.

Brilliant.

Simon

ozzy

It's the X-Factor for wannabe businessmen/women

suprabeast

i wanna know how that bird is gonna pay for the 100k's worth of underpants!

Deep Singh

I can't believe they still have that bird on it whose business went bust.

Also, the amount of money they have to invest is chicken feed for them. Someone worth £150million investing £50k? You and I take bigger relative risks.

Do love the programme though!!

supertouring

Just like X-Factor - but they all play the Simon Cowell role!

They just hate everyone and are happy to tell them.

Great fun, one of my favs.

eldudereno

The woman looking to sell olives alongside other pub snacks was


I hate olives!!!

dpb

The square mile guy should be pretty confident the buisness has been running a while afaik ...!!
I live on a boat in one of said marinas , however still on dail-up . Its £100 notes for an external wireles adapter from them and minimum 3 year.
Its sold on the basis that wireless is going to be more reliable in a marine enironment,but ive never had a problem.
Quite how they got the monoply i dont know, i guess there must be enuff ad.revenue there ,surprising it must be said - teh average owner prolly spends sub 2 weeks total a year aboard.

EP82

I caught this last night for the first time, found it really interesting to watch!

tonybooth

Good programme on the whole although I was stunned at the preparation of some of the people. Woman with the olives needed a right good slap.

Don't agree with haveing that Rachel woman on from Red Letter Days as she is not exactly a good role model. Always annoy me when big companies go bust and the customers lose their money but the big bosses always manage to retain their personal wealth.

By the end though I wanted to **** her

TONY

Diablo

Tony,

I would go further than that. How can anyone who's business has gone bust through bad management consider themselves qualified to comment is laughable.

We used to have a similar programme on Scottish TV. Local "businessmen" used to vote on the "Scottish Entrepreneur of the year" .

The company that won went into liquidation about three months later. It had been doomed to fail from the start, yet the panel of "experts" thought it was fantastic when they reviewed the business......

I can never bring myself to watch these shows. The "contestants" generally don't have a clue, and often the "experts" are no better..LOL....

supertouring

You need to get out more!

brickboy

I can't understand why the Square MIle guy was even asking for cash when it was just for marketing. He himself said he has 2500 subscribers. And exclusive mooring deals with 50+ marinas. So why give 38% of the company?

Use the marinas contacts to market the service for him as a service to THEIR customers, get the addresses of boat owners from the marina owners (he does have contracts with them after all) and mailshot them. Even offer them free wifi access for the first time they try it.

He did a very good pitch but he does NOT need £150K to market the company and certainly didn't need to give 38% of the company away. Great pitch, bad business decision I reckon.

tonybooth

Agreed

tonybooth

Good point. I reckon his business model was good enough (along with his existing base) to be able to raise the money from local venture capitalists or even his bank without sacrificing such a big stake (if any).

TONY

imlach

..but then again, who are the ones sitting on £xm personal fortunes made through business enterprise

While it's easy to knock these business angels, getting ahead in business isn't about being "nice", "moral", or "qualified". There's no formal education available for enterprise. The qualifications are generally gut feel, nerve, an ability to take huge risks, and experience.

RoShamBo

iTrader: (1)

I wondered about Rachel Elnor being involved this series seeing as her Red Letter Day empire has folded.
However she still obviously has a great business brain and has much to contribute - perhaps more of "these are the lessons I learned" / pitfalls to avoid about her business going under ?

Did you see her squirm a little when the 2 other Dragons were doing their "my businesses are worth £50 million & I have x y z" etc. I wondered what she was going to say but she changed the subject !

Agree end chap was excellent.

RAJ27

Agree the end guy was good, but what is Rachel doing on there. The amount of the general public who have been let down by her company.....shame on her.

Did you see the guy with the rollerskates on his knee?? What the **** was he on???

warrenm2

It was filmed in June when she was just about heading into the news, whne they commisioned it, everything was still hunky dory

warrenm2

Looked like 4 little wheels on each knee

Nicci

I only watched the start of the show, because my mum phoned and talked my ear off for the rest of it.

The olive woman had completely the wrong attitude.

Have there been any updates on last years 'winners'?

lawson101

Quality programme, im glad that its back on again.

I was thinking towards the end that no-one was going to get any money from the dragons at all!!

Olive woman appeared arrogant and should have been able to answer the questions put to her by the prospective investors; she shot herself in the foot.

The guy with the bottle stacker may be able to get funding elsewhere, respect to him for standing his ground but he may not get anywhere without the backing required.

The last guy with the wifi idea knew what he was doing and managed to realise that he was in the right position to bargain when he had the 3 offers in front of his, good on him.
Although he may have been better with the American, experience wise, but not for a 45% share in the company.

The woman dragon…..PMSL!!

Er.. um…ahh…Ive got marketing experience….

Whereas the others have amassed personal wealth in the 10-100’s of millions.

Nick100

I was expecting the last guy to finally go back to the American, when the others had agreed to match the 38% and say "So you've got all the experience in this field, so you should know how good the opportunity is and potential to make loads of money - I'll offer it all to you for 35% !"

wez_sti

really miffed by this one. why not get a £150k business loan?? surely the payments on that would be less than 38% of his entire business???
couldnt see why any banks would refuse him, esp when it seems he had the monopoly sewn up for the next 3yrs!

the dragons are in the very fortunate position of having enough money to make even more money.

someone comes up with an idea, puts years of their life into it, gets it to a point where its close to success, then the dragons come along and put 0.1% of their personel wealth into it and have a 40% stake in a company!

imlach

No-one was forcing him to take it.........all we see on tv is a 2 minute pitch. You don't think the angels invest PURELY based on a 2 minute pitch - they'll have far more background info than what we see. For all we know,the guy may have used all his avenues for capital and really needed that £150k PLUS marketing knowledge to help him.

GaryK

Yep a great prgramme been looking forward to the new series. The olive woman was awful, saying the amount of sales they had made was irrelevant, what a load of bollox thats going to be one of the key investment criteria. Always makes me laugh when people go on there and get asked:

Dragons: 'So how many have you sold?'
Pitcher: 'Well we are on target to sell x in the next 12 months'
Dragons: 'Yes but how many have you sold to date?'
Pitcher: 'Well 4 actually'

Agree with you Wez I would go the non-equity route everytime, simple fact of the matter is they are always going to want a bigger stake than the 5/10/15/20% the pitchers want to offer, they are all start-ups and high risk any investor is always going to be looking for 35/40%+ as a minimum. We sold an equity stake in our business about 18 months ago and I wouldnt do it again, but thats another story!

Gary

ajm

Oh come now Scott, we all know you fancy yourself as a bit of a Duncan Bannatyne!

Flatcapdriver

Firstly, you only learn from your mistakes which is as true in business as in general life so you tend to find that people who have businesses that have gone **** up tend to have a greater understanding of the pitfalls involved.

Secondly, you have to appreciate that its a mainly in the UK that people look so negatively at bankruptcy. In Oz or the US, discharged bankrupts are looked at far more positively and there is no real stigma attached to it.

DavidBrown

While the SquareMile/Wifi thing appeared to be a good idea, I think it's going to be very short lived. In years to come we'll have countrywide WiFi coverage and we'll say "do you remember when you had to be within range of a WiFi hotspot..". Very vertical market, and very shortlived. The best bet is for him to sell to another ISP quickly.