Swimming with the Sharks

Silhouettes of sharks underwater in ocean against bright light. 3D rendered illustration.

“Sharks are unpredictable. If you’re in the water and you see one coming towards you, you don’t know what will happen. Will it swim past you? Will it take a bite? Maybe it will take a bite out of another Shark,” says Shark Tank executive producer Clay Newbill in Michael Parrish Dudell’s book Shark Tank Jump Start Your Business (238).

I am addicted to this show, which had a season premiere last Friday. The premise is that successful investors listen to pitches from entrepreneurs looking to start or expand businesses. They make offers that mutually profit themselves and the investors if the pitches are sound, but not till they ask a lot of hard questions.

Each of the sharks has a unique perspective on business, as well as a specialty. I was taken with Shark Robert Herjavec’s story about getting fired and sued by his former investor the day after he’d returned from his honeymoon. He didn’t want to give the venture capitalist the satisfaction that he was losing money on attorney’s fees, so he researched the law to defend himself in the lawsuit. Herjavec says, “People believe you need to be a well-rounded person and work on your weaknesses. That’s just not true. To compete on a world-class level, you need to accentuate your strengths. Focus on the things you’re good at and hire someone to do the rest” (Dudell, 26). In the same book, billionaire Shark and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban comments on economic timing: “When the economy is slow, it means bigger companies are reducing their investments and cutting back, which opens the door to innovation. When the economy is good, companies often rest on their laurels. It’s always a good time to start a business in America” (Dudell, 12).

My burgeoning interest in business and economic reporting, covering Startup Weekend for both VoxTalk’s blog and the Missouri Business Alert this weekend, is teaching me a lot of useful tidbits.