BrewDog’s millionaire founder, James Watt, has blasted Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice for their ‘out-of-date’ format and portraying entrepreneurs as ‘deranged’ as he announced his rival reality show.
The 42-year-old mogul is launching House Of Unicorns in a bid to find a startup company with promising potential to invest in.
The competition show will see ten ‘Unicorn startup’ businesses go head-to-head over the course of six weeks as they compete to win £2million – the largest cash prize in UK history.
In the business world, a ‘unicorn’ is a privately held startup with a valuation of at least $1billion (currently around £808million).
Investors, like Mr Watt – who is believed to be worth more than £250m – like unicorn startups because they have the potential to be highly profitable, can disrupt markets and introduce new consumer trends.
The entrepreneur, who co-founded craft beer giant BrewDog in Aberdeenshire in 2007, will invest £1million of his own cash into the winning businesses, with another £1million from Founders Capital – Europe’s largest founder investor community.
Viewers hold the power to vote for which three companies will win £1million of the prize money and can also invest in the winning businesses. Mr Watt will decide which firms will win the other million.
House Of Unicorns’ fresh new format will rival that of the BBC’s Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice which do not portray business or founders in a good light, according to Mr Watt.
‘If you take a step back and look at business TV formats like Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice, I think they’re all 20 years out of date and they show founders and entrepreneurs as deranged, delusional and crazy. I think you can be entertaining without it being at the expense of business,’ he told .
In contrast, his show will be ‘massively founder friendly and business focused’, aiming to show the world of business in a ‘very different light’.
Viewers can invest as little as £10 each or more in the winning startups which will top up the investments made by Mr Watt and Founders Capital.
‘More than half of the deals on Dragon’s Den don’t even go through. And the best will get a £50,000 investment which doesn’t make much difference to a business. So we wanted to put in a more meaningful amount of money,’ he said.
His ‘love’ of helping business founders was another motivation for the show, however, he believes Labour’s policies and Autumn budget have made starting a new business harder in the UK.
He said: ‘The current government is so hostile towards businesses and entrepreneurs.
‘I think we are just about to go into a recession. We’ve got so many entrepreneurs and millionaires leaving the UK and these are the people who create the jobs, who build wealth and pay a massively disproportionately high percentage of taxes.’
The millionaire hopes to ‘kickstart’ the recovery of Britain’s ‘struggling’ economy with House Of Unicorns by creating more high tax paying entrepreneurs to replace those who left.
Mr Watt’s also revealed his show will feature three ‘super high-profile, incredibly successful business people’ as mentors for the contestants. He can not yet reveal who they are but confirmed them to be household names.
He confirmed his fiancée, Ms Toffolo, better known as ‘Toff’, will not be one of the mentors but said she will occasionally feature on the show to offer her own business insights.
It comes after the controversial businessman, whose management style has been dogged by allegations of inappropriate behaviour, started an online row last week when he said work-life balance is for ‘people who hate the work that they do’.
Mr Watt stood beside his fiancée as they encouraged everyone to aim for ‘work-life integration’ – the act of combining your job and your personal life.
The video was met with furious social media users who slammed the couple’s lack of ‘self awareness’ as not everyone is a successful business owner.
When asked about the backlash the pair received, he said: ‘There’s a lot of people hate their job. My advice would be to try and find something that you love doing.
‘Everyone’s got free will and everyone’s got agency. I think if somebody’s stuck in a job they hate, they’ve got the ability to change that.’