If you're meeting with Barbara Corcoran to pitch her on investing in your business, don't bring a legal pad and take copious notes.
It's the "kiss of death," Corcoran said during an appearance on Friday in San Francisco at the Startup World Cup, an annual, day-long conference organized by San Jose venture firm Pegasus Ventures.
Corcoran is perhaps best known as one of the original "sharks" on ABC's unscripted "Shark Tank" series but she also founded and later sold her own real estate brokerage firm, the Corcoran Group.
Now she invests in other entrepreneurs alongside the other "sharks" who regularly appear on the show including Mark Cuban, Kevin O'Leary, Daymond John, Lori Greiner and Robert Herjavec.
So, who's her favorite co-star? Cuban.
"He's the richest. And he does the math for me and they don't film it," Corcoran said, eliciting laughter from the audience.
And her least favorite fellow shark? O'Leary. "What really bugs me about Kevin, he's a little bit of a bully, a natural born bully. He's great for the show, I gotta give him that," she said. Also: "He is a cheapskate."
Here are five pieces of advice that Corcoran gave founders and investors during the Startup World Cup:
The best investments are in people, not business plans.
I invest in the people, I don't care what they do for a living, honestly. I'm just trying to size up the person and ask myself, "Will they get to the finish line?" I just sit there and every question I listen to and see through that lens. And when I have invested with my gut, on people that I trust, I always make money.
Follow your gut, and don't take copious notes during an investor meeting.
I give (entrepreneurs) the money and leave them alone. The minute you start poking around, sticking your fingers in a new venture, you ruin it for them, even though you mean well. I started out that way, the first couple of years. I know a lot about business, I lived it, I can really help these people. But I'll tell you, when somebody feels obligated to listen to me, they second-guess that gut decision (and) things go awry ... When someone's sitting in my office and they bring a legal pad it's the kiss of death. A legal pad and they write everything down. I'm like, "Oh God, I lost that money."
Just do it.
You don't have to get it right. You just have to get it going. Most entrepreneurs spend a lot of time analyzing things and making a business plan. I think it's grossly overrated. I'm sure there's a place for it. I haven't found it. The minute you take a business plan, which is theoretical at its very best, just a theory, and then you can take it out on the street and test in the street, it falls apart and you see what the obstacles really are. So I think the minute you have an idea, boom, you get out and you go with it.
Downturns are opportunities.
The best time to move ahead is the worst times ... I was in business 27 years, counting both businesses, and I found I can never move ahead in good times — I just couldn't. My big competitors will outspend me, out recruit me, take out my best metal because there's so much cash around, so much optimism around and everybody was in the game. But when bad times hit, my big competitors went for cover. They didn't want to lose money. They didn't want to damage their reputation. If they had an idea, they had to vet it through an attorney, through accounting, through a board of advisers. As a little business, it was my day.
Be like a jack-in-the-box.
If you aren't particularly adept at dealing with rejection, you shouldn't be an entrepreneur. I think entrepreneurship is nothing more than a series of overcoming obstacles. And I have found that my best entrepreneurs, myself included ... are very adept at getting back up ... Every entrepreneur I've ever invested in who turned out spectacular is like a jack-in-the-box ... they keep popping up.
