Shark Tank Australia 2023 premiered on August 30 with brand-new Sharks circling some seriously impressive businesses and while both Jane Lu and Sabri Suby were sitting pretty as investors (alongside Dr Catriona Wallace, Robert Herjavec and Davie Foggarty), their initial reaction to being offered a place on the show was met with hesitation.
Speaking on Mediaweek and Chattr’s The Entertainment Hotline Podcast, both Lu and Suby admitted that they thought the offer was a “scam”, given that they receive many of these as business owners.
“I didn’t believe it because…there was a typo in the email,” Lu admitted. And she wrote [the person who emailed] ‘Shark tanks’, and I’m like, it’s spam. You know those phishing emails? It was at a time when we were getting a lot of those. I thought someone was trying to prank me with ‘Shark tanks’.”
Elsewhere in the same podcast episode, Suby revealed he had had the same experience.
“There are so many scams out there all the time,” he said. “‘Hey, we want to put you on the cover of this magazine. You’ve won this award. You just have to pay this small fee and we will include your company in the list of the fastest-growing companies etc. You never know who’s coming at you.”
Luckily for us, both Suby and Lu soon realised that they were indeed being asked to be a part of a real show and were both thrilled by the opportunity.
Left to right: Sabri Suby, Dr Catriona Wallace, Davie Fogarty, Jane Lu and Robert Herjavec. Ten
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How Jane Lu and Subi Sabry choose to invest
At the beginning of the premiere episode, there was a disclaimer: “The following are actual negotiations between entrepreneurs and investor ‘Sharks’. The Sharks invest their own money at their discretion.”
“My husband reminds me of that,” Lu joked. “You’re literally shopping for businesses out of your own business pocket or out of your own pocket.”
Further to this, she revealed what she was looking at when considering whether she’d make an offer.
“I could tell you what I was looking for,” she admitted, “But I definitely invested in businesses that didn’t fit those criteria as well. Because I understand a product business, a product eCom business, I thought that’s kind of where it’s my specialty, and also where I can see myself giving value so that I’m not ‘dumb’ money.
“I’m not just putting money in and that’s it. Where I could actually use my experience to actually give that business that step up. But that being said, I definitely invested in other types of businesses, which was hard to explain that to my husband!”
Suby, who has the fastest-growing digital agency in the country, had a more logical approach.
“I’m able to easily size up a business very, very quickly and get a pulse rate on what the performance is like not just what the entrepreneur is telling me,” he said. “I’m able to just dive into the weeds very, very quickly and I guess cut the bulls–t in a lot of situations and find out what’s real…Nothing speaks the truth like the numbers.”
Thien Tranh. Ten
Jane Lu and Sabri Suby on investing their own money
Despite the aforementioned disclaimer at the beginning of the series, prior to this, Suby and Lu were both questioned about the authenticity of the series and if they were paid to be on the show.
“Everyone is under the assumption that the network gives us some kind of Monopoly money, right?” Suby said.
“We’re not paid to be on the show. It’s all our own money. We don’t know anything about these entrepreneurs more than the viewers do when they come and watch one of the pitches.
“We’ve got a very short amount of time to get down to the real situation of like, ‘Hey, I’m actually going to be writing a cheque to this person, so I need to know where we stand with everything.”
Suby also said that he witnessed some “phenomenal” pitches during the season.
“There was a very good food one that I’m a little bit regretful that it didn’t turn out the way that I wanted it to. We had everything from skincare products to orthopaedic orthotic insoles. There was so there’s such a wide variety of entrepreneurs, and we really weren’t told anything [before they pitched].”
Listen to the full episode with Jane Lu and Sabri Suby on The Entertainment Hotline Podcast.
Shark Tank Australia 2023 airs on 10 and 10Play.