Bob Kroupa owner of New Era brands has made some huge mistakes and his pitch to the Shark Tank Investors left him with no deal and tons of advice.
Bob Invested $2,000,000.00 and produced $800,000.00 in sales by hiring a President and Operations Manager to run this business. My bet is he did this right from the start, got a couple of people that have no idea what it is to be an entrepreneur and expected them to figure out how to make it work.
You can’t hire business managers to do the job the entrepreneur does and the entrepreneur rarely makes a great business manager. There is a time and a place for both, and he got it wrong.
The advice the Sharks gave Bob was to go back to real estate and he obviously took what they said to heart. He actually agrees, that is what he should do. But before he gives up on his product, I have some suggestions that he might consider that could help him to get his money back, and might even make him a profit.
What Bob should have done was taken this to a business incubator, either in his community or to a nearby college with entrepreneurial programs. These types of organizations have serial entrepreneurs that have specific skills and interests who would potentially be interested in taking his product and building it into a real company.
He should give up control, and let the entrepreneur go about running the company. If they need capital, they can go out and get it. If they are able to license it, so be it. At least Bob would put the product into the hands of someone that is about building something, not just taking his money and running.
Bob is clearly not an entrepreneur; he is a developer, a manager per say that is creative. He needs true entrepreneurs to help him. Ideally he needs a serial entrepreneur that has experience in this industry who already has the right relationships.
If Bob is smart, he will realize this deal isn’t done, but he’s got to pass it on to someone who can get the job done.
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