Brett Wilson was consistently the most interesting of the (Canadian) Dragons, and his shocking departure from the Den created the opportunity for him to be involved with something insightful and unique. Unfortunately, this isn't it. Risky Business is promoted as a show designed to introduce real people to the world of venture capital, to eliminate the mystique around this kind of investing, and to get ordinary people involved in making investments. Sadly, it fails on every front.
Brett basically serves as the host of a really bad game show. The contestant couple is brought in, and two "ventures" are put before them. They are asked to invest their money -- between $10K and $20K -- in one of them, and Brett backs the other (for the same amount). They come back at the end of 30 days and see who made or lost more money.
There are three main drawbacks with the show.
The first is that it completely discards its greatest asset -- Brett. He does absolutely nothing that couldn't have been done by Robbie the Robot. He offers no opinions, no insight, and makes no decisions. The personality we got to know on Dragon's Den is completely absent.
The second is the ventures are, often, a complete joke, far removed from anything one would consider "an investment". One example was the pool player who would take the couple's $10K, and find an opponent to play a challenge match for the same stake. The player would take $2000 of any winnings. Given that no opponent was yet lined up, there is no way to conclude that she had a better than 50% chance of winning her match. This wasn't a venture, it was just a bet, and a stupid one at that. They would have a better return by going into a casino and plopping their money down on red at the roulette table.
Another common example is "I'm going to buy a bunch of widgets, fix them up, and sell them for a lot more money than I paid for them." Typically, the venturer acquires the widgets, sells some of them, and makes some profit for the investor. But any real investment agreement would take into account the fact that the venturer retains property bought with the investors' money, and they'd get some credit for that. The show doesn't allow for that, which completely does a disservice to the idea that this is anything like "real" investing.
Finally, the show's half-hour format doesn't allow for any kind of in-depth discussion of what these ventures are or how they work. Most of them are pretty interesting. Even the one about the pool player had some real potential, and a look into the life of a "professional pool player" would have been informative and interesting. But no. There was virtually nothing.
This show really could have been something, particularly if they had given the show an hour. Let Brett get personally involved in the venture he was backing to improve their chances (and maybe make some efforts to sabotage the one he wasn't), and the result could have been real dynamite. But instead, it's just roadkill.
It's like Mr. Wonderful's giant boot came down from the sky and squashed him, before he even got started....