

Ask HN: Is Shark Tank realistic? - mavsman

TV shows are sometimes far from how things happen in real life and sometimes they&#x27;re very accurate. When you pitch your company to VC&#x27;s, is it anything like the TV show Shark Tank?
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smt88
Shark Tank is as much like raising money as The Bachelor is like dating.

More seriously, I'd say their questions and points of attack are sometimes
realistic, but the valuations are not even in the same solar system as they
are for real (software) startups.

In the real world, you'd also see much more focus on the founders: who are
they, what have they done, and (most importantly) who is vouching for them,
either implicitly or explicitly.

It's entertainment. If you want to know what pitching is really like, find
some serial entrepreneurs in your city (every city has them) and invite them
out for coffee. People are more approachable than you'd expect, and
entrepreneurs tend to be very outgoing, helpful people.

~~~
paulhauggis
"In the real world, you'd also see much more focus on the founders: who are
they, what have they done, and (most importantly) who is vouching for them,
either implicitly or explicitly."

If this is true, it makes sense to me now why things like the "yo" app get 1
million in funding.

~~~
smt88
It was a $10M valuation. That's not that insane, even for something that seems
stupid.

Conventional wisdom is to start out with something so simple, it seems
unfundable, but it gets lots of traction. Then you build on it to get to
something that's less specific and more of a Big Idea.

I'm not sure if this was always on Yo's roadmap, but it's become an ad-hoc
notification center. That actually sounds useful, doesn't it?

[http://valleywag.gawker.com/the-man-who-gave-
yo-200-000-1593...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/the-man-who-gave-
yo-200-000-1593328826)

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patio11
Ask a simple question, get a simple answer: No, Shark Tank is virtually
nothing like VC funding.

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srehnborg
Keep in mind it's an hour show with 5-10 minutes devoted to each company(TV
Time). The time spent asking the real questions, getting to know the founders,
and learning the product takes a lot longer. It's just edited for TV. That
stuff is edited since it's network TV and the general population would be
lost.

Is it real or staged?

MC: It’s all real. There’s nothing fixed and nothing staged. Literally those
deals go from 30 minutes for just stupid-ass ones to 2.5 hours for some
people.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-what-shark-tank-
is...](http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-what-shark-tank-is-like-
behind-the-scenes-2014-3)

------
runjake
Another point:

Every time a "Shark" does an Reddit AMA, they get asked about what goes on
behind the scenes/what doesn't make it on camera, and in many cases, they are
condensing multiple hours of a company in front of the Sharks to 5-10 minutes
of TV time.

You can Google back to the Mark Cuban Reddit AMA where he goes into the
immense side that goes on off-camera.

