Dragons descend on Ryerson

Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Written by Hilary Hagerman

On Monday night, Ryerson students had the chance to get entrepreneurial advice and insight from business mogul and Dragon’s Den judge Robert Herjavec.

Herjavec, along with Stuart Coxe, the executive producer of Dragon’s Den, appeared at the Ted Rogers School of Management with Professor Sean Wise to discuss topics ranging from the show, to how Herjavec made his fortune, to advice for young entrepreneurs.

The sold-out Dragon’s Den event is just part of Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) Ryerson’s Global Entrepreneurship Week. SIFE aims to create new economic opportunity for Ryerson students by implementing innovative projects, and providing the opportunity for students to gain hands-on practical experience throughout events, markets and competitions. “It’s experience like this that lets students take what they learn in the classroom into real life,” said Neil Wolf, Associate Dean for the Ted Rogers School of Management.

The event itself was a challenge for SIFE, said Wolf. Wise had told the students that the goal was to sell out the event, and unless they sold 500 tickets, it wouldn’t go on. SIFE sold 550 tickets.

Throughout the event, students viewed a previously unaired episode of Dragon’s Den, the hit show where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to five multimillionaire judges in the hopes of getting funding or selling part of their enterprise. Herjavec and Coxe also discussed the show and entrepreneurship with Wise, and the audience even got the chance to ask their own questions to the guests.

During the interview, Herjavec talked about his own rags to riches experience. His family, who immigrated from Croatia came with very little money, and that was part of why he became an entrepreneur. “It was about getting away from where my family was,” he said. “I imagined how much better it would be if we had money.”

With hard work and determination, Herjavec earned his fortune by launching BRAK systems, a provider of Internet security software, during the initial stages of the dot com craze. In 2000, he sold BRAK to AT&T, and now heads the Herjavec Group, one of Canada’s leading IT security and infrastructure integration firms.

Now, Dragon’s Den is giving people a sense of what an entrepreneur actually does. “It gives access to people, it gives people the notion of creating their own business,” said Coxe. Herjavec agrees. “Now people think that they can make money with business and technology,”

So what advice does Herjavec have for Ryerson entrepreneurs? “It comes down to basic skills our moms and dads taught us. Show up early, work hard, be disciplined,” he said.

Herjavec also says that the key to success is really the execution of the plan. “Some people need good advice more than they need money.”

And above all, be passionate about what you’re doing. “If you keep doing stuff purely for the money, one day you’ll hit the end of the road,” Herjavec said. “But if you keep doing stuff you love to do, the money will follow.”