“Mount up! Let’s hear more about this unicorn.”
So begins every episode of a new reality show called “Unicorn Hunters,” built around an outlandish twist on a well-worn premise: What if people could actually invest in the startups they see on television?
It gets weirder from there. The panel of judges, who debate whether to invest on air, includes Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, former U.S. Treasurer Rosie Rios, and former NSYNC band member Lance Bass. Together, the seven judges form “The Circle of Money,” where companies must venture for cash and validation. The show’s marketing team even coined a new word for the production’s work: “enrichtainment.”
About the Author Reprints
VC funds like to call themselves “smart money”, but so many of them passed on Google, Salesforce, Amazon, Uber, etc. Before launching the Unicorn Hunters show, I’ve raised $30M for my TransparentBusiness company using the same Global Private Offering approach, and our investors include current and former executives of Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, Stifel, Bank of America, Barclays Global Investors, UBS, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Telefonica, Airbus, LinkedIn, IBM, Microsoft, EY, PwC, Deloitte and Accenture. Hardly “an option of last resort”! Now we are helping other innovative companies raise expansion funds while remaining independent from VC control.
Weird indeed. A new hyped-up version of so-called “Reality” TV is truly not an indication of worthiness of Real Money. This is a not so well hidden version of blatant advertising, that may lead to more wild gambling. This attention-craving is just more fodder for inaptly named “social media”. Crapshoot sounds applicable.