HOMEWORK: Barbara Corcoran (inset) enlisted Columbia Business School Professor Donald Weiss’ (standing) MBA candidates to help her decide which businesses to invest in on “Shark Tank.” (
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Barbara Corcoran is taking local MBA candidates for a swim in the “Shark Tank.”
Last season, the pixie-cut real-estate mogul enlisted a group of Columbia Business School students to help her decide which businesses to invest in on the ABC reality series.
“They take my deals, slice them up, chop them apart, do the due diligence and spit it back,” she tells The Post. “And they get graded on it. It is real life.”
Her team of eager researchers were all enrolled in a class called “Starting and Running an Entrepreneurial Company” taught by Professor Donald Weiss.
“They focus on the competition, the market share and how much money it is going to take to [be successful],” Corcoran says. “They scrutinize the patents and do all the hard work.”
In turn, Corcoran agreed to be a guest speaker in Weiss’s class.
“Afterwards, Barbara met with each of the groups for lunch,” Weiss says. “She wanted more of their time!”
Initially, the students — many of whom held full-time jobs with large corporations — were offered extra credit for their expertise. When the semester ended, about a dozen continued on as paid consultants, earning $500 for each evaluation.
“There were two deals last season that we backed out of on the strength of their due diligence,” Corcoran says. “Things that I would not have picked up on.”
Corcoran also hired one of the students, Miguel Gonzalez, to be her Chief Investment Officer, overseeing all of her “Shark Tank” ventures.
“This year, we are going from 13 companies to hopefully 25,” Gonzalez says. “So we need a bigger staff.”
“Shark Tank” — which returns to ABC on Sept. 14 — has also become a teaching tool at Harvard Business School.
Professor Noam Wasserman frequently uses clips from the show as teachable moments in his class, “Founders’ Dilemmas.”
“I would play a segment up until the point where offers come,” he tells The Post. “Then we would have a vote in class about which of [the deals] would you take if you were those founders.”
Last November, Wasserman invited investors Daymond John, Robert Herjavec and Mark Cuban to campus to address his students.
“There were all sorts of things that we were able to accomplish by having them in the classroom to talk about what was going on in their heads as we are watching them on screen,” he says.
“Shark Tank” has become a valuable resource in educating the next generation of entrepreneurs, Wasserman says. “They are able to see the ways in which you have to be prepared for high stakes conversations and things like that.
“Even an 8-year-old can go and start getting a lesson. And it seems to be able to convey key life lessons to even younger people than that.”