5 reasons why South African entrepreneurs should think twice before entering the local Dragons’ Den

South Africa is getting its own version of the hit reality series Dragons’ Den. Business giants Lebo Gunguluza, Vusi Thembekwayo, Polo Leteka Radebe, Gil Oved and Vinny Lingham will be dragons staring down the hopeful entrepreneurs, all of whom think they have a world-changing idea. Great, you might find yourself thinking, you’ve honed your skills at pitching competition after pitching competition. You could use a little investment and the exposure couldn’t hurt, so why not enter?

Well, we’re not saying you shouldn’t, but there are a number of things you should at least consider before rushing off to fill in an entry form.

1. It’s entertainment

If you’ve ever entered a pitching competition, think about the format they most often take. You usually do a preliminary pitch followed by a few hours — or in some cases a few days — of mentorship before pitching again. Think about how that would translate into TV. Not all that thrilling is it?

That’s why Dragons’ Den skips the first two steps and goes straight to the final one. In some ways it’s analogous to any other reality TV talent contest. The people who make for great TV are the ones who completely bomb and those who have inspiring stories and shine from the get-go. Anyone who’s watched any of the international versions of Dragons’ Den will know that the same is largely true of the entrepreneurs featured on the show.

Thing is, some of the people who audition for those shows could have longer and more fulfilling careers as session singers, for instance, than the eventual winners. But we never get to see them. Once again, the same applies to businesses. You may well have a business that could make you millions by changing an enterprise process, but if it has no entertainment value, it’s unlikely to feature on the Den.

2. If you make it on, you will be edited to the extreme

Because the only recurring “characters” on Dragons’ Den are the judges and the format isn’t that of a long-running competition, it doesn’t have to be edited to conform to particular narrative, as is the case with other reality shows.

According to the show’s Wikipedia page, editing is done largely to conform with time constraints. That may be true, but it does not mean that you’re going to be edited objectively.

Remember, this is an entertainment offering. If you pitch perfectly but for a single “off” moment, do you think the show’s editors are going to cut that moment out or feature it prominently? This isn’t TED kiddo.

3. TV isn’t a walk in the park

Remember those pitching competitions we spoke about earlier? Remember how nervous you were the first time you took part in one? Well unless you’re of a very particular disposition, trying to do the same thing on TV is whole lot harder.

As we’ve already pointed out, you wouldn’t have had any mentorship or been given any guidance when it comes to honing your pitch. Perhaps worse though is the fact that, without a crowd, there aren’t any friendly faces to comfort you if things start to go badly.

It’s just you, the TV crew and the judges.

And speaking of the judges…

4. The judges are paid to be mean

Look, we’re not casting any aspersions on the business credentials of the South African judges. You only have to look at their accomplishments to see why that would be fool-hardy. We’re just saying that if you go on the show, you have to expect that the judges will be mean.

It’s pretty much the show’s whole schtick. Refer to point number one again. The show isn’t about entrepreneurial mentorship and pushing startup founders to be the best they can be. Dragons’ Den is entertainment and the judges are a large part of that entertainment. They will therefore do whatever they can to be entertaining.

A great example of this is Captive Media, which appeared on the UK version of the show. The company creates interactive branded content that appears on propriety screens in urinals, but the Dragons didn’t see it like that.

“They just kept going on about how it was a peeing game,” co-founder Gordon MacSween told Management Today. “I was never able to move the conversation on because they were locked into the novelty of it. You don’t get professional investors trying to come up with killer one-liners when you’re pitching, scribbling put-downs while you’re answering a question.”

Take them out of the show’s setting and you can be pretty certain that they’ll approach your business differently (unless they start acting like the UK Dragons that is).

5. The Dragons don’t know everything about business

As experienced and well-versed as the dragons might be in the world of business, it’s worth remembering that they don’t always get things right. Setting aside the fact that the format can cause them to miss the point of good businesses, they’re still only human and will sometimes get things very badly wrong, even when it seems like they haven’t.

Take Ling Valentine of Ling’s cars, for instance. Her appearance on the show is about as cringe-worthy as it’s possible to be and her company’s site is awful (spectacularly so). The fact that the Dragons offered her anything seemed like a miracle, the fact that she turned them down seemed completely bizarre.

The thing is, her hard work and various publicity stunts have helped turn the company into a multi-million pound empire and her website has been praised by US Internet marketing guru Seth Godin for employing internet marketing best practice.

Lings cars might not have seemed like a sure bet at the time, but it’s still around… unlike some of the former Dragons’ own businesses.

So what should I do?

If you want real investment and real mentorship, then do whatever you can to find the dragons — or people like them — outside of the show. It might take longer, but you probably won’t walk out broken-hearted just because a handful of people didn’t like your business.

Building a business is hard. It always has been and always will be, so if appearing on a TV show is just going to distract you from doing that (and possibly put a massive dent in your confidence, then it probably isn’t worth.

If, on the other hand, you feel confident that your business is strong enough to take on everything the Dragons throw at you, then you might as well go for it.

But if you want to guarantee that you’ll have a good Dragons’ Den experience, then watch this parody: