Comment by logicallee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by logicallee | Hacker News Reader

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I'd like you to give more of your credentials.

I've been in contact with several of the of the entrepreneurs featured there, one of whom is a YC-backed entrepreneur (MTailor), and also for what it's worth I have another contact (via email) that I don't want to name.

I haven't been on the show or anything like that. Why would you say that it is a "lie"?

A lot of deals fall through. What specifically would you consider a "lie"?

Examples of a lie would be if there were never any money that ever changed hands, etc.

Other than that, it seems to be genuine

>but no investor can adequately research a business in the 15 minutes it takes to shoot each pitch.

You claim to have worked on shark tank but somewhere I heard that the pitches are much longer (up to an hour+) and get edited down, whereas you claim that it is 15 minutes, about the running time. So who's right?

For this reason I would like you to name what crosses the lie threshold for you, and give just a bit more of your credentials.

For the rest of us reading this I will state that the biggest "lie" isn't a lie at all: getting exposure on shark tank is a huuuuuuge amount of value for any company. But this is not something that any entrepreneur mentions (or it gets cut). I've never heard anyone say "Do you realize that when this airs, based on my talks with other founders we will get about five hundred thousand hits to our web site? So far we have a 7% closing rate on every single visitor who has ever come to our site." or anything like that... it's the elephant in the room that nobody really mentions, except a few times the sharks refer to it obliquely as 'gold-diggers' etc. but it's not mentioned in a positive light, for example when negotiating about valuations. I haven't seen anything else that seems to be a lie to me! (And this includes personal contact as mentioned at the top.)

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12515619 and marked it off-topic.

I think his definition of "lie" is very broad in the sense of presenting something to be different than it actually is. For example:

- The show makes it seem like the pitch lasts 15 minutes when it generally lasts much longer in reality (I've talked to a friend who has been on the show that has verified this).

- The show makes it seem much more dramatic than it actually is by overlapping dialogue, rearranging and timing reaction shots, and using music (to the extend of fabricating a conversation)

- The show makes it seem like an exact deal is made in 15 minutes when there is much more involved before and after the show

Yes. More or less I agree with what you have said. The main point is that the complaint against the TV show is ridiculous as the show is created for the purpose of entertainment, not veracity.

It's interesting that some people think of TV as somehow "true." Maybe it is emotionally true, but it is not reality. Reality is having to commute 90 minutes to work on a TV show that portrays reality falsely as many of my colleagues do.

Thank you. Look, this is not a place for video editors (in specific), i.e. you're literally on a startup forum. I don't know if you have any experience with startups other than via Shark Tank, but after reviewing after you've written I've come to the conclusion that your calling the show a lie is completely unwarranted, and informed more by your prior experience e.g. "We edited it so that he never came back down and that she was calling her daughter's name... as if they were up there naked or something... That is where the "lie" is most evident." -- but you did not give any examples of anything nearly that bad as regards the deals.

You may not know this, but in normal negotiations with startups, there are many, many meetings involved over a very long period of time. So many deals fall through that there had to be a Handshake protocol invented just to keep VC's to their word - https://www.ycombinator.com/handshake/

"Silicon valley runs on handshake deals." Yeah, due dilligence gets done afterward, not on the spot! Of course all pitches are rehearsed very, very heavily. I mean these are actual businesses that were built for a decade at times, you know?

I think you go way too far writing "with just enough truth to keep 'suspension of disbelief' aloft." These are real businesses that continue whether or not anyone ever films them again. They're actual deals. A lie would be if these businesses (and their sales numbers, etc) were fabricated out of thin air and did not actually exist. Example: Silicon Valley, the show, like Pied Piper. If Pied Piper were presented as reality, and its numbers shown as reality, without even so much as existing - that would be a lie.

The most telling is that you call Mark Cuban, who is by no means a celebrity first and investor second, a "talent". He's not some actor playing a role on Shark Tank.

So I simply am not on board with your original comment that I replied to - it goes too far.

You should have simply said that the interactions were heavily edited, and represent deals that continue after the part that is aired.

A lie would be if an actor were playing the character invented for the "talents" you mentioned, but these people did not exist in real life, were not really business people at all, let alone actual investors investing in startups with real deals, or if the businesses were fabricated.

So after reviewing what you've written I would suggest that you tone it down a bit. I had skype conversations with the businesses shown. My conversations had a startup on the other side - I wasn't talking with some character, like Homer Simpson. They also matched what I saw on screen (more or less, of course, heavily edited.)

These are businesses first, and short shark tank segments only incidentally. They're not lies or fabrications.

>"Look, this is not a place for video editors.."

This guy... and his 'skype conversations' with entrepreneurs lol

Please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN.

Ironic

> Look, this is not a place for video editors (in specific),

Says who? You?

HN is a community of people interested in hacking. I don't recall submitting a Carnegie Mellon degree to join.

As an editor myself, editing is a great form of hacking. Your job is to build a timeline to very often immovable constraints measured in seconds; to consult a library of techniques and effects to produce a desirable presentation. Shit, editors even get the best A/B testing of all when test screenings are involved.

When Katrina happened my job was to show my audience what was going on. There wasn't even time to edit -- I've "edited" news live on air by pushing the TD out of the way because I knew what was there. This included hot patching. If this doesn't remind you of a late night optimizing your growth metrics, I don't know what will.

Above all, an editor is the silent hand in a production guiding your feelings as a viewer. If I linger on someone's face after they're done speaking, you're going to study their emotions and likely transfer them. If I cut away immediately you get distracted by the next thing. If I hold too long it ruins the moment and makes you realize you are watching television. That's the thought that goes into a single edit. Editors tell you how to feel and you don't even know it. That's almost the purest of UX design.

Engineers aren't special and there is no single definition of hacking. There is a lot of ingenuity and craft that goes into things with which you are not familiar.

> He's not some actor

Talent is an industry term for "the people paid to be on camera," and applies to anybody. It is the antonym of crew and exists because "cast" doesn't always apply. It is not a career. Mark Cuban became talent when he agreed to perform his services on a television show. You don't know this because you're not in television, which is perspective you do not have and oddly ironic given that you're basically lecturing this guy for lack of perspective on your field.

You are being incredibly condescending to someone you don't know, including explaining negotiations to someone after admitting you don't know what experience they have. I didn't have to go far in their comment history to determine that you've almost certainly misjudged them.

After reviewing what you've written I would suggest that you tone it down a bit. Yours is honestly the most out-of-place comment I've read on Hacker News in a while, regardless of who you are or what authority you think you've been granted to speak on behalf of the community.

(I opt out of your representation, thanks.)

What a completely off-base comment. You missed the part where the person claimed that as an insider,

>I worked on Shark Tank. It is a lie (but not unlike almost every other TV show) with just enough truth to keep "suspension of disbelief" aloft.

that is a wildly inaccurate mischaracterization. Your whole comment is off-base because you missed that. No, there is not "just enough truth to keep suspension of disbelief aloft" with the whole thing being a lie.

It's genuine negotiation that reflects real businesses, real talks with investors, and real investment.

There is one fake aspect, which I highlighted: when discussing the valuation, the entrepreneurs don't tell the sharks about the shark tank exposure ("when this airs... ") even though it is a huge point of leverage.

Shark Tank in my estimation is not inherently a lie (except this part). It is heavily edited, obviously.

Use of that word is inappropriate.

If you think my comment had anything to do with Shark Tank or a claim I missed (I didn't), I'm not the one that's off-base, I can wholeheartedly assure you.

Then you should go ahead and delete that comment (or replace it with an X) and I'll delete my reply.

My:

>I've come to the conclusion that your calling the show a lie is completely unwarranted

is the summary of the comment you object to. A video editor can't come here and start calling a pitch event an inherent lie with just enough truth for suspension of disbelief. That's not wht it is.

The troll reply by wutangson1

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=wutangson1

might have affected your judgment, as it purposefully badly misquotes that HN is not for video editors in specific (by leaving out "in specific") and taking a trollish tone. There's nothing unusual about a skype conversation with a startup. For what it's worth, the reason I didn't mention the name of my contact is due to not wanting this kind of trolling.

Shark Tank is real. Anyone with a company reading this can apply and exposure on it will likely be beneficial if it happens. There's nothing inherently fake about it, other than not mentioning its own effect. (I've also never heard an entrepreneur give a purposefully evasive answer to margins saying, "well I don't want to give an exact amount to all the shark tank viewers, but our bill of materials is in the low single digit percentages" rather than saying "it costs us $1 to make and we sell it for $39.99")

Except for those self-referential aspects missing, the show appears to me to be reality.

You continue to arrive at the false conclusion that I have made an error in judgment, or missed something in forming my remarks rather than being a tiny bit introspective. I would reiterate that I am not talking about bloody Shark Tank at all (despite your best effort), but thinking about how to phrase that is yielding a lot of four letter words.

I don't sense a productive future from this thread, sorry. And no, I'm not deleting anything. You should re-read what both you and I have written tomorrow.

>I don't sense a productive future from this thread, sorry.

I agree and don't want to clutter this thread any worse. If you want you can email me (profile has it) but I won't reply here any more. I enjoy your other posts on HN.

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