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Stories, tips, and learnings from and for startups around the world. Welcoming submissions re: startup education, tech trends, product, design, hiring, growth, investing, and more. Interested in submitting? Visit our submission form here: https://airtable.com/shrShpeN89HrzCzOB

What Happens When Shark Tank Meets Venture Capital? Seriously.

8 min readApr 28, 2017

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Barbara Corcoran of Shark Tank and BCVP Partners

How did your relationship with Barbara Corcoran start?

What do you bring to her world and vice versa?

Can you compare Shark Tank to venture capital?

What could technology startups learn from Shark Tank?

Any other lessons founders could take from Shark Tank?

You need to solve a real problem.

Phil Nadel, co-founder, BCVP

You’re looking for companies to scale up hugely. How blunt do you have to be with founders?

The question we always ask, “so if you do everything right, how large could this get?”

With your huge deal flow, do you fear getting over-confident and missing a diamond in the rough?

My feeling is you can’t have regrets about missed deals.

When you pass on a deal is it because you were turned off by the person or the idea?

What hot buttons do you look for in an entrepreneur?

Ideally, we like to see an entrepreneur who’s done it before. Multiple exits, multiple startups are preferred. Those entrepreneurs have a level of experience that a first-time founder just doesn’t have.

What is the single most important factor in making your investment decision?

A very big thing is traction.

What gets in the way of a company scaling up?

There are a lot of trade-offs, at an early stage.

Great wine grows in soil short on nutrients. Similarly, is a tight budget good for a startup company?

What are the top reasons startups fail?

There are countless missteps that will doom a company, like spending too much, too quickly, and cutting your runway too short is towards the top of the list.

Conversely, what helps a startup succeed?

A founding team that is truly a team, and not a group of people who just met.

Is product marketing much easier due to social media?

Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple were started by co-founders. Are two heads better than one?

It’s difficult for a single founder to have such diverse skillsets that he or she’s able to do everything.

Sometimes a team of three is even better. But we also continue to invest in plenty of companies with sole founders, if we’re confident in their skillsets.

What do the strongest startup founders have in common?

If you talk to a founder who leaves you with a sense of, “I can do it all,” that’s an automatic red flag.

What about passion?

Are you seeing more women as founders, and how does Barbara feel about investing in diversity?

We like investing in companies founded by women.

How much time does it usually take for an early stage company to exit?

What trends are you seeing in valuations?

In Silicon Valley, some of the companies are raising at crazy valuations. We consider ourselves to be a value investor in early-stage investing, if there is such a thing.

What is the difference between what you do and an amateur investor?

I also think that amateurs often make the mistake of investing in just one or two startups. In order to have a reasonable chance to generate a solid ROI on your investment, you really need to build a diversified portfolio.

You’re investing in early stage companies. How can you be sure things are meeting expectations?

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Startup Grind
Startup Grind

Published in Startup Grind

Stories, tips, and learnings from and for startups around the world. Welcoming submissions re: startup education, tech trends, product, design, hiring, growth, investing, and more. Interested in submitting? Visit our submission form here: https://airtable.com/shrShpeN89HrzCzOB

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham

Written by Jeff Cunningham

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