Shark Tank is as much like raising money as The Bachelor is like dating.

More seriously, I'd say their questions and points of attack are sometimes realistic, but the valuations are not even in the same solar system as they are for real (software) startups.

In the real world, you'd also see much more focus on the founders: who are they, what have they done, and (most importantly) who is vouching for them, either implicitly or explicitly.

It's entertainment. If you want to know what pitching is really like, find some serial entrepreneurs in your city (every city has them) and invite them out for coffee. People are more approachable than you'd expect, and entrepreneurs tend to be very outgoing, helpful people.

"In the real world, you'd also see much more focus on the founders: who are they, what have they done, and (most importantly) who is vouching for them, either implicitly or explicitly."

If this is true, it makes sense to me now why things like the "yo" app get 1 million in funding.

It was a $10M valuation. That's not that insane, even for something that seems stupid.

Conventional wisdom is to start out with something so simple, it seems unfundable, but it gets lots of traction. Then you build on it to get to something that's less specific and more of a Big Idea.

I'm not sure if this was always on Yo's roadmap, but it's become an ad-hoc notification center. That actually sounds useful, doesn't it?

http://valleywag.gawker.com/the-man-who-gave-yo-200-000-1593...

I'm pretty sure the kid who made that app had connections to a fairly wealthy investor who used the app partly for their own promotion.

Ask a simple question, get a simple answer: No, Shark Tank is virtually nothing like VC funding.

Keep in mind it's an hour show with 5-10 minutes devoted to each company(TV Time). The time spent asking the real questions, getting to know the founders, and learning the product takes a lot longer. It's just edited for TV. That stuff is edited since it's network TV and the general population would be lost.

Is it real or staged?

MC: It’s all real. There’s nothing fixed and nothing staged. Literally those deals go from 30 minutes for just stupid-ass ones to 2.5 hours for some people.

http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-what-shark-tank-is...

Another point:

Every time a "Shark" does an Reddit AMA, they get asked about what goes on behind the scenes/what doesn't make it on camera, and in many cases, they are condensing multiple hours of a company in front of the Sharks to 5-10 minutes of TV time.

You can Google back to the Mark Cuban Reddit AMA where he goes into the immense side that goes on off-camera.