Inside Dragon’s Den:
Part 1 - Introduction
Cool Companies magazine 2008 Vol.3 Issue 1
By Claudia Sammer, Founder and Editor of Cool Companies magazine
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The TV show Dragon’s Den features Canadian entrepreneur hopefuls pitching business ideas to angel investors called the Dragons. The source of the show’s controversy has been the sometimes scary interaction between entrepreneurs and Dragons, as well as the sometimes poor quality business ideas that appear to be for TV entertainment purposes only. The question Cool Companies magazine wanted to know was: Is the Dragon’s Den serious in offering real value to Canada’s entrepreneur community or is it taking advantage of want-to-be entrepreneurs for TV entertainment? To investigate, we asked 3 groups with different perspectives: entrepreneurs that appeared on the show this season, a Dragon, and Canada’s experienced and successful Canadian entrepreneurs who read Cool Companies magazine.
What do Canadian entrepreneurs think of Dragon’s Den?
Part 1: Introduction to Cool Companies’ article Inside Dragon’s Den (content below)
Part 2: Entrepreneurs on the show
Part 3: Interview with a Dragon: Arlene Dickinson
Part 4: Opinions of experienced entrepreneurs
Introduction
What do Canadian entrepreneurs think of Dragon’s Den? Cool Companies magazine found 3 different perspectives. This is Part 1 of the article, the introduction.
Dragon’s Den is a TV show on CBC. It’s a reality show where promising entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas on national television to a panel of 5 successful Canadian business leaders known as the Dragons. Good business ideas and pitches from the entrepreneurs can launch the Dragons into a bidding war against each other to invest with their own money in exchange for an equity percentage. Contestants must decide in the moment whether to accept or not, and often make bigger equity concessions than they planned.
Dragon’s Den has made some effort in increasing the awareness and challenges of entrepreneurship in Canada, and provided Canadians with further insight into criteria used to judge a potentially market-viable new business idea. With Canada’s success rate for new company launches at less than 20% after 5 years in business, it would seem that anything that helps would be good. Or…maybe not?
The first season of Dragon’s Den in Canada had some controversy—even though the Dragons are angel investors, this ain’t the Angel’s Den. Controversy remains in Season II: some of the quality of product ideas pitched were obviously included for entertainment value. And, some of the Dragons have sometimes had harsh things to say to the entrepreneurs on the show. Another eye-raising issue is that of the handful of “deals” that were made in Season I, ONLY ONE entrepreneur survived the Dragon’s due diligence process and successfully received funding: Jennifer MacDonald of London, Ontario, who made a deal for her organic Omega 3 salad oil company, Cenabal Gourmet Organics (cenabal.com).
As an advocate of Canadian entrepreneurs, Cool Companies magazine investigated whether or not Dragon’s Den is really helping Canadian entrepreneurs or is it just providing pure TV entertainment. We did this by interviewing 3 sets of people for 3 different perspectives: entrepreneurs on the show, a Dragon and experienced entrepreneurs.
(Season II of Dragon’s Den runs at 8 pm (8:30 pm NT) on CBC TV on Monday nights. For more information visit www.cbc.ca/dragonsden. The format for Dragon’s Den was invented in the U.K. and local versions have been developed for Japan, Australia and now Canada.)
What do Canadian entrepreneurs think of Dragon’s Den?
Part 1: Introduction to Cool Companies’ article Inside Dragon’s Den (above content)
Part 2: Entrepreneurs on the show
Part 3: Interview with a Dragon: Arlene Dickinson
Part 4: Opinions of experienced entrepreneurs
