Dragons' Den Mash-up: The recession may have stopped the Dragons investing money, but they have something else to offer - themselves.

No the wine balloon was on an invention show on Food Channel. These two businessmen looked over three kitchen inventions and then decided the wine balloon was the best. They helped with packing of the product and development.
Here is the link: http://www.foodnetwork.com/kitchen-i...get/index.html

I've never seen that show before, I doubt that was where I saw it.

i think its because he so rarely can invest in anyone any more that he needs to speak to justify being on the show.

i dont mind kevin just talking crap ,its makes the show more entertaining ...i couldnt imagine the show w/o him .

CTS posted this on twitter today... looks like Robert stiffed the Soap Queen. Seems pretty shady.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-57...eo-perseveres/

They have a disclaimer that says they need to do some research after the show. I think something like 75% of the "deals" don't actually go through.

doesnt surprise me.

i think at face value i would trust robert less than anyone else. he just seems so manipulative and always tries to appear like the good guy.

Its amazing to see the difference between Shark Tank and the UK original Dragons Den.

In dragons den they take the piss out of peoples ideas and grill them hard on their figures, but if someone has a good idea they seem to give them a fair price.

Shark Tank is enjoyable to watch but those guys are disgusting, kicking people out of the room so they can underpay on business, Forcing people to make big decissions very quickly, withdrawing offers and coming back lower. It sets a bad example for people and just makes the people on it look dumb.

These people often seem a bit clueless when it comes to the financial aspects and rather than work with them the sharks just want to abuse them. Multi-millionares and a billionaire basicaly making poor people suffer for the sake of a couple of thousand bucks (nothing to them).

I think what the contenstants (not sure what you would call them) dont realise is if 5 sharks want to invest in your business you have a good idea. They shouldnt be leading the deals.

Im pretty sure if the shaks would invest in an idea its good enough for someone else to invest in.

On the Canadian Dragons Den they used to always have a dozen or so individuals per season pitching ideas where you could tell the individual was slightly mentally ill and the business idea was fully ******ed. It was done solely for the purpose of comic relief but when you consider that the person is not all there it is actually quite mean to put them in that situation for the sake of entertainment. I don't mind if they were mean to some cocky douche with a stupid idea but when it crossed over into putting the mentally ill on as dancing bears I feel that is in bad taste.

Not any different than when American Idol puts mentally handicapped people on at the beginning of the season. But yes, I agree, that's pretty terrible.

Since we're talking about putting mentally ill people up on display I guess I'll put in my 2c. I think the 'comic relief' thing was put into these kinds of shows by American Idol. That has lead to a whole subclass of reality TV (see Jersey Shore) where watching morons act like morons as comedy has reached whole new pitch levels.

At the same time I don't think it really has any value in 'contest' type shows. The cooking channel's 'chopped' basically puts talented chefs in very hard spots and is popular ratings wise... And NBC's 'The Voice' is quite a bit better than American Idol at this point--if only because the talent level is much, much higher (even amongst the top tier Idol Contestants I don't think they're as good as the average The Voice contestant talent or experience wise). I don't think it really works to have complete idiots come up and make a fool of themselves on national TV... The best moments on shark tank come (In my opinion) when the sharks knives come out and they fight over something good. Anything that increases the likelihood of that happening is good for the show imo.

Na, it didn't start with American Idol. Cops did it well before that. Was there anything good like that before Cops?

LOL@Cops, that show was seriously funny when I was a kid. Along the same vein, although this is off topic for the thread, bait-car is equally or more hilarious. As far as before Cops, no I can't really think of anything before it.

Fair enough... I don't watch much TV

Great episode tonight. It's a good thing that Kevin doesn't actually want to invest in any deals or he might be offended.

Agreed 100%. I only watched it a bit, but I always had a gross feeling for the same reasons.

These shows are so manipulated, (I know, duh, it's reality TV). Two of my friends worked for a small company that was on the Canadian Dragon's Den, they went on asking for around 250k, ended up actually accepting a deal for twice that (but gave away much more equity than they planned), and there were articles and press releases about it.

Behind the scenes though, the company never actually came to terms with the investors when they had to write up a term sheet, there were months of REAL negotiations beyond the short TV segment, and no deal ever happened. The company was later acquired by a large company. If you google it though, you'll be convinced that this was a great investing success where these entrepreneurs got 500k from the dragons. I'm sure they're not the only case where the reality is far different from what was televised.

Related to tonight's episode:

http://www.businesswire.com/news/hom...pands-Consumer

Jamba® Acquires Talbott Teas™ - Expands Consumer Products Platform

wonder what they got for it. it was a good idea, and im not gonna lie, i want to try a few of them.

im always blown away by crappy products like the girl jewelry, it's such crap, but i guess young girls are idiots.

I was blown away the girls made $1 million in PROFIT last year and yet sold 30% of the company at a $1 million valuation.

A few things of NOTE:

1) this is a fad product IE sales of those caps are unlikely to be sustained over a long period of time, although they may still grow for a year? 2 years? not sure.

2) When a deal like this is done, it's got to be because they believe the Sharks will add extreme value to their company. Their hope is that by giving the sharks 30% of their company at a bargain price the sharks will help them grow their business to the level they themselves would not have been able to do. They are sort of hiring these "experts" in business.

interesting episode.

the ledge pillow bit was pretty cringeworthy, fairly obvious why a company with 83 sales over 3 years made it on tv and it was never getting an offer.

i loved so much the girl basically ignoring all of lori's bs and getting the offer back down. would have been awesome if they hadnt joined up and she had ended up with cuban at 25% or something like that.

Mark basically said to them that he's very much willing to go for lower equity and what they asked for was season tickets, lol.
There has to be better people for this outside the Shark Tank and at better value, so I don't understand why they don't just get the "free" publicity and wait/look for better offers after the show is done. Although I guess this is kinda what's happening as most of the deals don't end up happening in reality.

Mark Cuban's new blog post
Your Quick and Dirty Guide to Sharktank

I thought these tea guys were sharp. Everything they said made sense, although I felt they sold themselves short on the valuation (it's possible they didn't actually close this deal).

Anyone know how much Jamba paid for them?

Side note: At breakfast (slightly upscale diner) this morning I noticed Talbott teas available for purchase near the register. They might be on the menu too, I don't drink tea for breakfast and have never looked at the drink menu at this place.

Still, I go to this place a few times per week and I had never even noticed the teas sitting out there. There's no doubt in my mind that Shark Tank subconsciously made me aware of teas and this product in particular, and when I glanced at them today I actually took notice as opposed to not thinking twice about it.