Back to the archives: Words of wisdom from previous Shark Tank judges

With the fifth season of the reality TV show Shark Tank Australia starting off with a bang last night, SmartCompany decided to take a deep dive into the depths of our archives to pull out some words of wisdom from the previous Shark Tank judges.

Did you spend many nights on the edge of your seats with your fingers crossed as you watched entrepreneurs take to the floor to pitch their business ideas or products on the first four seasons of the Australian version of Shark Tank from 2015 to 2018? Did you love sinking your teeth into the journeys and stories of the entrepreneurs as you secretly rooted for your favourite pitches and wanted to see their ideas get off the ground thanks to a once-in-a-lifetime investment? 

Well, you will remember these sharks: RedBalloon founding director Naomi Simson, businessman and Talent2 International founder Andrew Banks, Boost Juice founder Janine Allis, Greencross founder Dr Glen Richards, and internet pioneer Steve Baxter. 

Real estate mogul and McGrath Estate Agents founder John McGrath also starred in season one of the show before being replaced by Dr Richards from season two onwards.

Naomi Simson

Big Red Group co-founders Naomi Simson and David Anderson. Source: supplied.

In 2001, Simson founded the online marketplace for experiences RedBalloon, which now sits within its parent company Big Red Group, which Simson co-founded in 2017. She served as an investor on Channel 10’s Shark Tank from 2015 to 2018 where she was known as the ‘red shark’ thanks to her signature clothing colour.

On pitching:

When it comes to pitching, Simson said there is one element that appeals to her the most. How well the ‘pitcher’ engages with the listener.

“All of us in small business pitch for one reason or another. Whether it is to suppliers, customers, banks or potential investors, we need to get the story straight on what we are wanting to achieve,” she said in 2016.

“The thing is what appeals to me in a pitch may differ from someone else you are pitching too. Have we not seen countless times in pitches on Shark Tank that what appeals to me may not appeal to Steve Baxter or any of the others and visa versa?

“Therefore, empathy and understanding about what the listener may be interested in becomes critical to a pitch.”

It’s okay to make mistakes in business:

Simson has previously spoken about why it’s okay to make mistakes in business and her personal motto, which is: “If it is meant to be, then it’s up to me”.

“What this means is that if mistakes happen, I take responsibility for my mishaps, misadventures and misunderstandings – I do not blame others,” she said at the time.

“Life is not perfect so why would the life of a founder be? No one has the intention of making mistakes – by their very nature they are accidental. It is our ability to learn from them that makes the difference, but that shouldn’t be news to anyone.

“It is okay to feel the loss, the pain, or the upset – but you simply cannot dwell on the mistakes you have made. You must move on. As a leader it is your job to lead, therefore the only thing to do is to pick yourself up and refocus on the vision. And take another step.

“I have made business mistakes, which have cost me dearly – but the business continues to thrive. I have said the wrong thing in public and while it was deeply embarrassing, I acknowledge I am but a human. Life goes on.

“I choose not to lament the mistakes I make.”

Dr Glen Richards

Glen Richards. Source: supplied

Veterinary physician Dr Glen Richards founded the pet care empire Greencross in 1994 and grew it from the ground up from a single veterinary practice in North Queensland. He joined Shark Tank in 2016 as an investor and has put funds behind the likes of Get Kids Cooking, OneWorld, and pet-sitting startup Pet Cloud.

What startups should look for in an investor:

In 2017, Richards spoke about what startup founders should keep an eye out for when it comes to finding the right investor.

“There are people like me who have had the experience of business. I’ve done a lot of right things and a lot of wrong things as I’ve grown businesses and so I think I can add a lot of value to someone’s business. But on the flip side, the business owner has got to find a business investor that they think they can work with,” Dr Richards said.

“It’s a two-way conversation and it’s a business relationship that may last five, ten, or twenty years. So there’s got to be strong compatibility around how the business owner and investor might work together and to ensure that that investor will add value to that business journey, that they’ve got a network as well as the money.”

An entrepreneur’s most important quality:

For Richards, the most important quality for an entrepreneur is being able to listen to and take on advice.

“There are three reasons people come into the tank: publicity, money, and strategic mentoring advice,” he said.

“The ones there for advice are the ones I want to work with, as they’re willing to listen to other people’s opinions. Business people can be the victims of their own success, and they can think they’re heroes in the business field so they stop taking advice.

“As a business person, you’ve got to be humble, and it’s damn hard.”

Janine Allis

Janine Allis. Source: Women’s Agenda.

One of Australia’s most successful businesswomen and entrepreneurs, Janine Allis founded Boost Juice Bars in 2000 after opening her first juice bar in Adelaide. Today Boost Juice has over 580 stores across 13 different countries and counting.

Make it a learning opportunity:

When it comes to things going wrong in business, Allis has never viewed hiccups in her business journey as failures, instead treating them as learning opportunities.

“I don’t really look at things as having gone wrong when I think back on them, because without that thing going wrong maybe I wouldn’t have been able to do something else that went right?” she said.

“So I think that everything that goes wrong is kind of right anyway.”

Entrepreneurs encouraged to fail:

Allis said she encourages entrepreneurs to fail, believing that without failure not only would business be “boring”, but we wouldn’t have the developments and aspirational companies we have today.

“Business is the sum of all the things we do, not just one thing. If you do everything right all the time, business would be boring, and we’d be probably be going backwards,” she said.

“In actual fact, it’s the things that go wrong in business that make your business succeed.”

Business owners should embrace technology:

Allis also had pearls of wisdom for women business owners, stating that women in startups have to embrace technology if they’re to succeed as it will play a key role in the future of any entrepreneur, and they may already have the skills they need.

Allis noted in all her time as an investor on Shark Tank that she can’t think of one woman who came in and said she had a tech and coding background.

“You can’t be ignorant or say it’s far too complicated to understand it,” Allis said at the time.

While writing code can appear to be complex and inaccessible, Allis said “by jumping in you’ll find out it’s actually common sense — it’s quite simple”.

Having even just a basic level of tech knowledge can be crucial to running a startup. And — whether male or female — if founders don’t embrace the technology and the changes it will bring, “they will be relying on other people”, Allis said.

Steve Baxter

Steve Baxter, Tom Maclean and Glen Richards (left to right). Source: supplied.

In Shark Tank pitches tech entrepreneur and River City Labs founder Steve Baxter often said: “if you want my full-time money then I am going to need your full-time focus”. 

Embrace those crazy ideas:

Baxter says entrepreneurs should focus more on their “crazy” ideas and look to leave their day jobs behind them.

“Is your idea crazy?” he said.

 “Who cares, if people use it and it can generate revenue then all of a sudden it isn’t crazy.

“People trying crazy stuff need to surround themselves with smart opinions and help.

When looking at a potential deal, Baxter believes it’s about three things: the skills, the problem, and the idea.

“It boils down to the same thing for each deal. It’s about the people and their skills, what problem they’re solving, and how they’re going to solve it,” he said.

Finding an investor for your business:

The technology entrepreneur has also spoken about the fact that more Australian businesses should consider listing on the Australian Stock Exchange to give the company a ‘quality stamp’ and to raise the capital needed to keep growing.

Baxter has previously described taking a company public as “a relatively easy thing to do” and that listing on the ASX – the eighth largest stock exchange in the world – also provides a “platform to talk to everyone in Australia about your progress publicly”.

He says some business owners can be turned off by the thought of taking their company public, but they risk falling into a trap of delaying growth while trying unsuccessfully to secure private investment.

For any business owner seeking external investment, Baxter says the number one rule is to “get a plan” which should include projections for the company’s level of turnover and how much cash is needed to reach that point.

The next step is to consider the different ways of raising capital, whether it is from investors or taking on debt.

But before you get that far, Baxter says all business owners should already have a mentor, and working with your mentor or networking with other business owners is just as important when your company begins to grow.

Andrew Banks

The Quick Flick founder Iris Smit with Andrew Banks. Source: Supplied

Talent2 founder Andrew Banks says regardless of the quality of an idea on the table, he’ll only put down money if he thinks he’s going to enjoy working with the people involved.

Deals are like buses:

“I want to work with people who are going to be fun to work with,” he said.

“At my age and where I’m at, I have lots of opportunities to invest. Deals are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

“Thirty percent of the conversation is about the idea, then I need you to go into where the cash is coming from.”

Banks says he’s also seen a number of business deals fall through, putting many of them down to misaligned requirements and principles of the companies that weren’t explored properly beforehand.

He says businesses should not be afraid to be upfront with potential partners about what they want and what they value, otherwise they could find themselves wasting a lot of time for nothing.

“The times when deals haven’t happened is when I didn’t get clarity up-front and early about key things that were likely to be important to both sides. We were doing a deal with an American company, a licensing deal, and in the end, some of the key requirements they had for the deal to go through were actually total dealbreakers for us,” he said.

“So don’t do what we did and spend three months going around in circles. Get everything out in the open upfront at the head of the agreement, way before you get lawyers involved. If you don’t you might find yourself partnered with a company where you both don’t agree on basic principles.”

All about the execution: 

With all his years in business, Banks says the main time he’s seen businesses fail is when the execution hasn’t followed an idea, even when the idea has been a winner.

“I’ve seen businesses with a great market, quality product and strong goals, but because it had the wrong people delivering or selling it, it didn’t do what it hoped to do,” Banks told SmartCompany in 2018.

“For example, Talent2 had a very large training business that worked all around Australia. In the end, it was not as successful as we would have liked because we were quite reliant on government grants, and the rules around what companies wanted kept changing beyond our control.

Read more about Shark Tank Australia here.