Here’s what ‘Breakthrough Entrepreneurship’ author Bill Murphy Jr has learned from every Shark Tank pitch ever made.

1. Your odds are as good as anyone’s.

Let’s start by establishing a baseline. Out of 377 pitches that I reviewed, 185 were successful–meaning that the entrepreneurs on the show reached a handshake deal with at least one shark to invest in their company. That works out to a pretty amazing 49 percent success rate.

Of course, only a small percentage of entrepreneurs who apply for the show get picked to appear to begin with–0.4 percent, according to the show’s producers. Even after a deal appears to be struck, there is usually an intense due diligence process that kills many–maybe even a majority–of deals.

2. Bigger markets are better.

I used seven categories to characterize each of the entrepreneur’s pitches, and the most consistent predictor of success was “mass market.” An amazing 78 percent of the pitches we tagged in this category were successful.

Granted, there were a number of pitches where the sharks held back because they were wary of getting into a big industry dominated by big players. However, where all else is equal, the sharks wanted to see massive potential for growth. If you don’t have a big potential market, that’s hard to demonstrate.

3. Don’t get too far ahead of the customer.

Wannabe entrepreneurs often make a common mistake. They try to come up with a product idea that is actually too far ahead of the competition. The problem is that by doing so, you can get too far ahead of your customer as well.

Another way to look at this is that contrary to stubborn perception, real entrepreneurs and investors don’t like risk. These kinds of risky pitches were often tagged as “niche” in my analysis, and they were successful only 23 percent of the time.

4. Customer needs beat customer wants.

We’ve already seen that mass-market categories do best on Shark Tank, but it turns out that some specific mass-market categories do better than others. What do they have in common? The customer need they help solve has more to do with an actual “need” than a mere “want.”

Case in point: clothing, which is one of the most consistently successful categories on Shark Tank, with entrepreneurs getting a handshake deal 73 percent of the time. There have also been a heck of a lot of pitches for food, alcohol, and other related products–65 by my count. Those do better than average as well, with about a 55 percent success rate.

5. Don’t be ridiculous.

There have been a fair number of pitches over the first five years that seem at first designed more for comic relief than for a serious attempt to get a shark to invest. Unsurprisingly, they are rarely successful. Pitches whose primary tag was “just plain weird” were successful only 11 percent of the time.

You can imagine that some of these pitches–things like the guy who wanted to surgically implant Bluetooth devices in people’s heads, or the entrepreneur who said he could generate energy by harnessing the Earth’s rotation (while mining gold and producing fresh drinking water as byproducts)–seem like they got on the show because they’re fun television stunts. However, if you don’t think there are many entrepreneurs out there trying to pitch similarly crazy ideas, let me give you a tour of my email inbox sometime.

6. Focus on the customer, not on yourself.

It’s hard to overstate this. Sometimes, some of the sharks can appear on the show to have soft hearts, especially when they see entrepreneurs who are incredibly passionate about their products and have already overcome long odds to keep their dreams afloat. When it comes time to make a deal, however, an entrepreneur’s personal story is really only compelling if it demonstrates that he or she has a compelling insight into customer needs.

The show’s recent season premiere had a perfect example of this. An entrepreneur named Michael Elliott who had an incredibly compelling personal story–he’d been a ward of the state as a child, lived on the streets for a while, and ultimately became a successful magazine writer and screenwriter–clearly earned the Sharks’ respect. However, when it came time to make a deal on his Hammer & Nails “nail shop for guys,” there were no offers to be found.

7. It’s hard to be trendy.

There’s a lot of fool’s gold in trends. Things move so quickly in business that by the time a new entrepreneur can identify a trend and think of a way to capitalize on it, the trend is often over. That said, while the sample size is small–only five pitches that were tagged primarily as “trendy”–four of these entrepreneurs managed to leave the show with a handshake deal.

Despite that 80 percent success rate, I worry about people taking the wrong lesson. For every Buggy Beds (capitalizing on fear of bed bugs) with a $250,000 investment and a $1 million valuation, there’s a pitch like Broccoli Wad (a money clip capitalizing on the popularity of The Sopranos) with a much smaller $50,000 investment and a $250,000 valuation.

8. Women are better customers than men.

At least when the sharks are involved, entrepreneurs who are seeking to sell primarily to women do better. Pitches that I tagged primarily as targeting women had a 56 percent success rate. Beyond that, products aimed at children did 59 percent, and pitches that were tagged as “educational” had a phenomenal 73 percent success rate.

Combining the high success rates of products for women and children with the high success rate for clothing, however, might lead some entrepreneurs to an unfortunate conclusion. I found several instances in which entrepreneurs on Shark Tank wanted to sell maternity clothes. Not a single one was successful.

9. Know your numbers …

I’ve often found that you can predict whether a business is doomed to fail within about 60 seconds by asking two simple questions: What customer problem are you solving? Why are you the person to solve it?

That second question explains why there is no easier way to get eaten alive on Shark Tank than to walk into the studio looking for an investment of thousands or even millions of dollars, and not be able to articulate basic metrics about your business very quickly. This was a little bit harder to track, but anecdotally it came through time and again.

10. But don’t nickel and dime.

Finally, this last lesson also goes back to being able to do simple math–especially under pressure. Believe me, I understand working to get the best deal possible, and there are some times when an entrepreneur is better off leaving a lopsided deal on the table. (Case in point: Copa di Vino, which even ABC’s website describes as the most successful pitch that didn’t result in an investment.)

That said, there are many instances in which negotiations on Shark Tank get caught up in a tense back-and-forth over what is really a phantom equity–sometimes to the point of killing the deal on air. Moreover, you have to suspect that many of the deals that get killed after the show is over are the same ones in which the negotiations are toughest on air. Both on Shark Tank and in real life, a contentious tone during the deal can make working together later more difficult.

BY OKUTTAH MARK

The transfer of M-Pesa servers from Germany to Kenya will be complete by the beginning of April, promising users of the mobile money transfer service a more reliable system.

The ongoing installation of M-Pesa servers locally is expected to end nearly eight years of foreign hosting, which has at times been cited for delayed response to service interruptions. Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore says the new M-Pesa platform is currently undergoing test runs expected to be completed by end of March.

“We will be running a parallel network from time to time while undergoing the test runs, thereafter we will have a complete switch over. We expect the new platform located here will have bigger capacity, be much faster and allow other merchants to connect directly to the platform,” said Mr Collymore in an interview.

The process of installing the M-Pesa servers locally began 18 months ago. It is expected to minimise service outages that occur whenever the undersea fibre optic cables which relay information to Germany and back are damaged.

Local hosting is also expected to save costs for Safaricom, which will now be in charge of maintenance of the system as opposed to currently when it pays fees to British telecommunications firm Vodafone, which is its biggest shareholder.

Mr Collymore said the new platform would come with additional functions that allow for M-Pesa’s integration with those of other vendors in banking, micro-insurance and retail sectors, especially supermarkets. He, however, said it too early to comment on whether Safaricom will pass on the realised savings to customers in form of lower M-Pesa tariffs.

Safaricom has invested heavily on building the new infrastructure. A higher processing capacity is expected to enable Safaricom clients to settle post-paid electricity bills, insurance premiums and bank payments in real-time.

It currently takes 48 hours for payments made to Kenya Power to reflect on the electricity distributor’s systems while those made to the National Hospital Insurance Fund take 76 hours.

The current M-Pesa platform handles between 200 to 300 transactions per second but after migration the rate is expected to go up to 600 transactions per second.

The upgrade and relocation of the platform locally comes at a time when M-Pesa is also eyeing bulk government payments such as pensions and salaries paid to beneficiaries in remote locations.

The mobile money transfer service is also expected to come under increased competition with the licensing of four Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO); including Equitel, Tangaza Pesa and ZionCell. China’s Huawei has been building the second-generation platform, which is also designed to have improve re-routing of traffic when the system fails.

Safaricom has recorded growth of M-Pesa subscribers to 19.95 million from 14.9 million in 2012 and its agents to 80,335 from 39,401 in the period.

South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma has hinted he may be ready to take a fifth wife to accompany him through old age, the daily newspaper The Star said Wednesday.

During a visit to a Durban township Tuesday in KwaZulu-Natal, the 72-year-old said in Zulu “Angakayakhi indlu yokugugela… laba ngisabathathile nje” (I do have wives but I’m yet to marry my last one).

The crowd, most of them elderly, laughed and cheered, The Star said.

Jacob Zuma, who on Sunday said he was in “perfect condition” after a stay in hospital in June, had earlier given a speech about the need to respect and tend for older people.

Sihawu Ngubane, a professor at KwaZulu-Natal University, was quoted by the newspaper as saying it was fairly standard among Zulu people for a man who practises polygamy to take a last wife for his last years, sometimes the younger sister of one of his wives.

“They call the last wife ‘indlu yokugugela’ (the home in which I will age in) because the responsibility of looking after the husband in their old age predominantly lies with the junior wife, who is often younger than the other wives and more agile in case there is an emergency,” Jacob Zuma said.

Jacob Zuma, who has around 20 children, has married six times but currently has four wives on the state’s budget, despite criticism from some tax-payers.

It was not the first time that Douglas Mwangi was falling in love. Unlike his previous two relationships though, it was the first time that he was falling in love so completely.

“Elizabeth was irresistibly beautiful,” he says. “I had pursued her for months without success.”

He couldn’t be happier when she finally accepted to date him. “I gave my heart to her, and saw her more as a wife than a casual girlfriend.”

Douglas went out of his way to demonstrate his love by supporting her ailing boutique two months after they started dating.

“At that time, it didn’t occur to me that perhaps it was too early to start reaching for my ATM card,” he says with a tinge of regret.

Contrary to what he expected after his ‘sweet gesture’, Elizabeth began to complain that he was snoopy.

“I frequented her workplace to see how the business was doing but she thought I was suspecting her of infidelity,” he says.

Douglas admits that he sometimes felt insecure, which prompted his benevolence in a bid to secure his place in her heart. He apologised for his actions and after much pleading Elizabeth forgave him.

However, she had discovered a secret: Douglas was helplessly in love with her, and could take whatever she threw at his feet.

In their third month together, she began to have too many weekend trips. He suspected that she was seeing someone else, but didn’t have the courage to confront her.

To make matters worse, Elizabeth began to misuse the money he pumped into her business. Eventually, he found out that she was using the money to finance her lover’s lifestyle and their weekend outings.

Ironically, Douglas directed his anger at Elizabeth’s side dish.

“I couldn’t see that she was the one on the wrong,” he admits.

Humiliated

The break up that followed left Douglas depressed and financially drained. He thought there could never be another like her, so he humiliated himself trying to pursue her.

Indeed, four months later, when Elizabeth broke up with her other boyfriend, Douglas almost took her back.

“I nearly welcomed her back into my life. It took my close friends and a psychologist I was seeing to dissuade me.”

Looking back, Douglas says that his biggest error was not loving Elizabeth but loving her completely: “If I hadn’t, I could have managed to redeem myself earlier.”

Loving a woman so completely is something that men fear doing. According to some men that we spoke to, a man just doesn’t give his heart to a woman, regardless of the intensity of their relationship.

According to Joseph Mwathi, 28, a man only gives his heart at his own peril.

“You should never love a woman with all your heart, whether she has earned it or not,” he cautions. “There is nothing like a guarantee of eternity in a relationship.”

Joseph explains that in his early dating years, he would fall hard for every girlfriend. In turn, the women treated him as they pleased. When each of the relationships ended, he found himself battling desperation and low self-esteem.

“My zealousness was hardly valued or reciprocated,” he says.

Nelson Nderitu, an educationist, attests to this: “One can only value what they’ve earned and not what has been handed to them on a silver platter.”

He says an emotional and financial breakdown taught him a never to be forgotten lesson on falling in love.

“I loved Jane and was overly eager to keep her,” Nelson says. “She took advantage of this, to the extent of seeing other men while I played the good guy, paying her college fees and waiting for her to come to her senses.”

But nothing could stop Jane from eventually leaving. His disappointment was so severe that he had to see a psychologist.

“I was totally messed up; I felt suicidal,” he confides. “And all because I had given my heart, and lost the guard that could have upheld me in that eventuality.”

Since then, he does not dare to love a woman with his heart.

“It doesn’t mean that I don’t love you or that I love you less. It is only a precautionary measure that men take.”

Best formula

But Joseph Kariuki sees it differently.

“As much as men don’t give their hearts easily, it all boils down to the woman the heart is being given to,” he says. “I once gave my heart and was hurt. And like any other man, I had to be cautious the next time I started a relationship. But after meeting my wife, I did not hesitate to try again, and it worked out. This doesn’t mean that we do not have our own ups and downs, but that we respect and value each other’s emotions.”

This is something that Nahashon Muna wouldn’t dare to risk.

“Men love with their eyes. Love is just a means to their end,” he says. “It is the accepted order and should remain that way. There are certain possessions that a man shouldn’t lose, and the heart is one of them.”

Apparently, men do not handle rejection or break ups well, and this is the best formula for surviving emotional hurt. It is also the engine that sometimes leads them sexually astray.