CBC -- Selling Yourself: The Art of Personal Branding

Gone are the days when being uni-dimensional tech guru gave you the highest growth. We now need a multi-facet profile or a "personal brand" to sell our offerings to top employers or angel investors -- the latter I am increasingly interested in. Towards this, I share a very relevant and fun CBC program [1]:

"we take marketing lessons from big brands and apply them…to you. This episode explores how to manage your social media, pick the best profile pic and avoid cliches in your resume."

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2674723240

Dragon's Den -- how do they assess a business?

Dragon's Den is a popular TV program where ordinary people pitch their business ideas to savvy investors. PhD by training and an entrepreneur by interest, I share key metrics that Dragons seem to use to assess a business.

1. Proposed valuation by a pitcher = asking price / proposed equity 
2. Assessed valuation by a dragon = profit x 4
3. Profit = revenue - cost (including salary)
4. Cost = cost of building the product or rendering the service
5. Sales = measured in the number of unit product sold and/or dollar value generated
6. Revenue Forecast = Dragon want to know the expected revenue of the current year and the next.
7. Investment = amount of money invested in the business by the pitcher.
8. Scalable = Dragon evaluate the scalability of a product/service.
9. Life = existence of a company in months/years. Anything over three years with no growing profits is generally viewed negatively. Often an indication of poor acceptance in the market.
10. History = Dragons look at the performance of the company for last quarter and year.
11. Debt = Any significant debt without profits is viewed very negatively.

I invite readers to extend and critique this list for the benefit of others.