Skip to main content

Shark Tank



I love Shark Tank. I think I've mentioned that before, even on this blog. Indeed, now that I've checked ... I wrote a post here that discussed the structure of the show. Today, I'll say something about the personalities.

Kevin O'Leary is the hostile stereotype of a capitalist, come to life and played at least somewhat for laughs. When Kevin decides that he has no use for a particular entrepreneur, he says "you';re dead to me." Not "I'm out" (the phrasing shared by all the other sharks in the same situation) but "you're dead to me."

Yet there is sometimes a "tough love" aspect to Kevin's snarkiness. I remember an episode in which two young men, who could not or would not offer many business plan specifics, were trying to sell equity in their computer password-protection system. Kevin (and Mark Cuban as well, IIRC) were interrupting them with hostile or sarcastic seeming questions. The two ladies on the panel, Lori Greiner and Barbara Corcoran, were trying to throw them lifelines, and criticizing Kevin's harshness.

But ... as the presentation would down, Lori and Barbara declared themselves out. Kevin was the last shark still "in" and the only one who offered them a deal.

The point? If you want someone to invest in you, you may have to perfect your shit-eating grin.

The two men with the password protection system turned down Kevin's offer, and exited the tank with their heads held high but sans working capital.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...
10 comments
Read more

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...
21 comments
Read more

The Lyrics of "Live Like You Were Dying"

Back in 2004 Tim McGraw recorded the song "Live Like You were Dying." As a way of marking the one-decade anniversary of this song, I'd like to admit that a couple of the lines have confused me for years. I could use your help understanding them. In the first couple of verses, the song seems easy to follow. Two men are talking, and one tells the other about his diagnosis. The doctors have (recently? or a long time ago and mistakenly? that isn't clear) given him the news that he would die soon. "I spent most of the next days/Looking at the X-rays." Then we get a couple of lines about a man crossing items off of his bucket list. "I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing, I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu." Then the speaker -- presumably still the old man -- shifts to the more characterological consequences of the news. As he was doing those things, he found he was loving deeper and speaking sweeter, and givin...
2 comments
Read more