Cold Hard Truth: Learning From Dragons Den’s Kevin O’Leary On Business, Money And Life Part 8

September 28, 2011

According to video footage of the meeting the professor further insulted Jim Treliving by saying “Let’s not take a couple of more trips on the jet, and put (the money) into the company”.  Jim had flown to the meeting in his private jet.  The amount of money Jim Treliving spends on owning and operating his private jet is very paltry compared to his no doubt huge net worth.  More importantly, the money he spends on his jet has absolutely no bearing on the amount of money he would have invested in this startup company ($40,0000), especially considering these students had no prior experience to starting a business and (from what I gather) no sales to paying customers (IE employers) at that point.  In many cases having zero sales is a major red flag to the Dragons because it screams “unproven business idea”.

The meeting went steeply downhill from there.

“The students just sat there, blank as fish.  That they weren’t embarrassed by their professor’s insolence, his utter lack of respect for our commitment to fund them, actually depressed me.  Then the professor asked us Dragons if we had business degrees.  I replied, “What does it matter?”.  But Robert, a self-made (multi) millionaire who had earned every penny in the vicious trenches of Internet start-ups, had had enough.  When the professor made a jab at Jim for flying to the meeting on a private jet, Robert leaned over, snatched up the check, and ripped it into tiny pieces.” – from Cold Hard Truth

Shortly afterward, as the prof was preparing to leave the board room, Jim Trelving asked him “Why didn’t you put (the money) up?”.  The professor, whose name is Dr. James Norrie, replied “Because I have a conflict of interest.  I’m an academic.  These are my students, they graduated from my school, and I care very much what happens to them.”

Filed under: Inspiration

Tags: angel, capital, den, Dragon, investor, shark, startup, tank, venture