Show success before asking for help

This is what happens on the Dragon's Den. The Dragons are much more likely to invest in someone who can prove that they can make a small success on their own, and who has the balance sheet or sales statistics to prove it.

Even if someone has a stellar product or service, if they have only sold a meagre amount to friends and family in two years the Dragons start to get tetchy and either ditch them, or ask for a huge chunk of the company in return for their investment.

Of course, I'm sure the Dragon's Den isn't necessarily much like the real world, but it's interesting to note the things they look for.

Most definitely. But it isn't like people are out to get you. Once you've shown success, people think (rightly or not) that you can duplicate it again. And they want in on that. They want to invest their money there because it seems more assured.

If you haven't shown any past success, then you're a risk. What makes you more likely to succeed than any random person?

This is why I like to have a few nice, running web apps of my own. When applying for jobs, they show that I've "succeeded" on my own (beyond what I might have contributed to on a team at my previous jobs). Sure, there are probably many people much smarter than me who don't have such apps to show off. However, my past "success" (at writing code and bringing it to production) is there.

The problem with the $15,000 songwriter that the article mentions is that they were a risk when first signed and so they only got a little. Even as they've proven themselves not to be a risk with their weekly submissions, they already accepted the bad terms and there's little reason for the record company to be "nice" and give them more. Likewise, if the $500,000 advance person is terrible, the record company has agreed to certain terms and there's no reason for them to be "nice" and renegotiate down because they're crap.

The largest part of this is that if something looks like it will succeed with or without help, it seems like a sure thing. Sure things don't require the rewards of high risk things because the chance of loss is low.

Using methods to invalidate accurate results only makes sense if you're more concerned about suppressing certain methods than about accuracy.

Of course, one can find these results interesting and agree with your (1) and (2), as I do.

Down-voted because it's irrelevant to the point he's trying to make. Arguing ethics isn't really that interesting. Discussing success, cash advances, etc etc is far more interesting.

Success = (Factor1 + Factor2 + Factor3 + ...) * Ethics

Ethics is a binary 1 or 0. Maybe not that interesting, but hardly irrelevant.

(Don't believe me? Let your customers find out about you lieing, cheating, or stealing. Then see what happens to your revenue stream.)