Lessons from... "The Apprentice"?

I was on a iBreakfast panel with Kay Koplovitz of Boldcap Ventures (founder of USA Networks and Chairperson of a new reality TV cable channel) and Salvatore Tirabassi, a partner at Dolphin Equity.

Sal surprised me. He started talking about what he looks for in a management team and pointed to a few lessons from the reality show "The Apprentice". Sal's money was on Bill, then Nick, for the final. Kay's was on Amy. I didn't comment, as I didn't know what he was talking about-- it's a reality show for god's sake.

But Sal drew some interesting conclusions about management team selection...

You might ask "Why Nick, the copier salesman, over Kwame, the Goldman alumnus with a Harvard MBA?"

I paraphrase for Sal here:

1/ Lack of personal engagement: Kwame fell down on personally managing the process, worried more about keeping his cool and civil relations. Good entrepreneurs often care more about success than how it appears to others.
2/ Poor team recruitment: Kwame's old team failed... why did he pick them again?
3/ Toleration of subpar performance: Kwame tolerated lying and a weak performing individual, Omarosa, to continue in the process.

Successful sales folks come from a culture that expend much effort on recruiting, continuously monitoring performance, and quickly cutting bait on underperformers. I would agree with Sal that Nick illustrated all of these traits far better than Kwame.

Why are sales professionals so unloved? One of the most important and toughest hire for an early stage venture backed firm are finding those top tier sales professionals. Everyone would agree that the biggest cause of venture failure is running out of money, which really means many times... lack of sales.

That's why Nick, copier salesman, should have been picked over Kwame, the Harvard MBA, Sal's alma mater.

Reality VC? Cool!