You know I said last week that it was always a bad idea to ask people about new business ideas? Well if only I’d listened to my own advice (damn that entrepreneurial instinct to take people with you). This week I set up a dinner with the senior industry guy who, the Gail Trimbles among you may recall, spent a brief and fairly undistinguished period as my mentor. This was carefully considered: at best his company could be a customer for my new product; at worst, I figured he was bound to know who I should be speaking to, who my potential competitors might be, and who might be gullible enough to finance me.

However, we didn’t get off to a great start.

‘You’re kidding, right?’ These were his first three words when I told him why I wanted to talk to him. Now I’m no psychoanalyst, but I was pretty confident at this point that the conversation was unlikely to end well for me.

I was momentarily thrown (after all this guy’s supposedly an entrepreneur himself, albeit back in the days of black-and-white TV) before spluttering: ‘Erm, n-no… I’ve got this great idea, you see’ – and then proceeded to talk him through it, trying and failing to spot any kind of reaction.

When I’d finished, he leaned back on his chair and sucked through his teeth, like a man who’s seen too many car mechanics in TV sitcoms (again, never a good sign). ‘SDE, can I give you some advice,’ he asked, rhetorically. Now generally when people say this to you, it’s a sure sign they’re about to be really patronising. And in this guy’s case, it was a dead cert. ‘SDE, I’ve been around the old block a few times, as you know,’ he continued without waiting for a response, as I tried to avoid my face setting in a scowl. ‘And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the moment the boss takes his eye off the ball, th-’

‘Or her eye,’ I interrupted, pointlessly.

‘Yeeeees. Well, that’s the moment when the company is inevitably doomed. There’s nothing more dangerous at the best of times, and this sure as heck ain’t that.’

‘Yes, but don’t you think that means there’s a big opportunity for someone?’

‘No, S__. It just means the consequences when you fail – and fail you shall – will be catastrophic, rather than just damaging.’

‘But it’s a great idea. People need this. I’m convinced they’ll buy it.’

‘I think you’re getting a bit carried away with your own brilliance here, my dear,’ he smirked, as I genuinely contemplated jamming my dessert fork into his eyeball. ‘Whether people need it is one thing. Whether they’ll buy it now is another matter entirely.’

Now I appreciated the validity of this point. I didn’t agree with it, and felt it was a pretty lily-livered way of looking at things, but it wasn’t ridiculous. So, realising that I wasn’t going to talk him round, I decided to give up. ‘So if I asked you for 500k in funding, I assume you’d be in, right?’

He smiled, in the condescending way that a grandparent might do when a five-year-old brings home a picture of a tree. I swear to God, if he could have managed it without knocking over his wine glass, he would have reached across and ruffled my hair.

So that was that. Not exactly an unqualified success – and certainly the last time I ask him about a new business idea. My only consolation is that he must have felt a modicum of guilt at least, because he picked up the tab for dinner. Or maybe he just thought I needed the money…

secretdiary@managementtoday.com