I recently discovered the TV show Shark Tank, about five wealthy investors who decide to fund or not fund various entrepreneurs. I think people here will like it.
I like Survivor, it’s pretty neat.
So basically a cheap imitation of Dragon’s Den?
Fun fact: The speaker at the international science fair to which I went got his grant from that show.
Cheap imitation?
In the comments of the blog post on this show (linked above also), it is mentioned how the investors sometimes place a great emphasis on the proprietary nature of the business that is being pitched, and that at least one (I’ve noticed two) of the “sharks” are pretty big IP whores.
I actually hadn’t seen any occurences of anyone speaking out against it in the episodes I’ve seen, but Kinsella has a great post documenting some of Mark Cuban’s anti-patent tendencies I thought was worth linking: