Norrie knew that.

Norrie couldn’t accept anyone else being in control, took over the meeting, lectured the investors, insulted them, and turned a modest little marketing success into a disaster for his former students.

Norrie changed the show from being about Jobloft and Venture funding into a side show on the arrogance of a Ryerson professor and the hold he has on those poor dumb kids.

@Kempton:

“For example, the 50%/control thing is a tool to reduce risk and create a safety margin buffer for weaker but still potentially good deal.”

The reality though is none of them actually would have owned 50%. And besides 50% is no good if the other guys own 50% too – all you get then is a deadlock. So then, again, it all comes down to the rules in place in the partnership agreement and ultimately the structure of the board.

“Is the “Multilingual” part in the “creation, management and translation of Multilingual websites & applications” out sourced to language specialists in those countries?”

Yes – with our technology we connect the content management systems directly to translation service providers who use a mix of local and in-country translators depending on the content.

@Anon.
“What is the expertise of the dragons worth? Not a heck of a lot—they didn’t spend time with the startup. The prof should be cut some slack. He is not a slick TV personality, with all the on-screen experience of O’Leary, etc.”

Actually their experience is worth quite a bit – but it’s also not expertise you want (or need) in the office with you 24/7. All I’d want out of that deal is an email address, a cell phone number (with agreement to returning a call/message in a reasonable amount of time) and a board meeting every 4 weeks (with face time at least every other one). Their guidance, and Rolodex would be priceless in this case).

Like I said 50% was steep for $200K but I wouldn’t say it was an “unfair deal”.

Thanks for the YouTube link and interesting post. I agree with some of your points but I am also in violent disagreement with some other points. (big smile) For example, the 50%/control thing is a tool to reduce risk and create a safety margin buffer for weaker but still potentially good deal.

Anyway good stuff.

Cheers,
Kempton

P.S. And I love your blog name “Found in Translation”! (Love that movie and her new one.)
P.P.S. Is the “Multilingual” part in the “creation, management and translation of Multilingual websites & applications” out sourced to language specialists in those countries? Note to self: Check this stuff out. (smile)

I’d love to see the tape of that whole boardroom session. Maybe we can convince the JL crew to do a “What happened?” session at the next BarCamp.

The Dragons know other “dragons” with big companies with jobs to fill. Seems kinda sound to me. Fish in a Barrel so to speak. But going retail, you’re competing in a bigger pond and spending a lot of marketing dollars reaching people who will seldom if ever use your service. There’s loads of opportunity to armchair this sucker, it’ll make good chatter for the TorCamp xmas mixer ;-)

Ah business strategy! Live it! Love it!