Blood in the Shark Tank

August 11, 2009 by Dave Haynes

I watch the Canadian show Dragon’s Den to see dreamers walk in, cap in hand, looking for investor money for their start-up businesses, so I was intrigued to see ABC was doing its own version called Shark Tank (apparently the show concept started in Japan).

Toronto was carpet-bombed with lightning strikes Sunday night so I had no power or TV and I missed the opening episode, which included a passage involving an entrepreneur who was/is attempting to build a DOOH network in medical waiting rooms.

I’ve since seen the episode online and all I will note is, “Eeesh.”

David Weinfeld does a nice job of breaking down what happened, and how this is yet another case of a dreamer who went hard with an idea without doing all the due diligence on whether it would really work. 

Anyone, anyone, who is starting a digital ad network needs to understand it takes a lot of money, hard work and most of all time to make a go of it (I have my own scorch marks on that). And even time, effort and patience won’t deliver success. It is just so sad to see a guy burning off his savings and kids college funds chasing something that is fundamentally flawed.