I am an ideas person and I have 10,000 ideas before breakfast....I have to be able to brush off 99.999999995% of them. The fact that i don't like your idea doesn't mean that it is bad or that it is impossible, it simply means that it doesn't appeal to me or i cannot see my way clear to make money from it.

I agree that the money men are not always right and that the overlook oppertunities. You must remember that the money men are looking after their own interests and their own money and want to invest their money at a reasonable risk to make a huge profit. What i do find good is to learn from the questions that they ask. Yes, a lot of the time the questions are meaningless but of lot of questions and insights are truly valuable.

The best kind of money man to have is a mentor (not some rich ding dong that charges you R1000 an hour but a person who is really enthralled by what you do). The problem that entreprenuers is faced with is not money per se, it is having the appropriate funding when needed to be applied properly. Many entreprenuers think that if they got a huge cash injection that their problems will go away, it doesn't work like that. The way i see mentorship is the same way as I see a parent of a child who wants to become a champion cyclist. When the 3 year old child says that he needs R500,000 and then he would be a champion cyclist that will win The Argus then the parent needs to channel the enthusiasm. You first get him a small bike with training wheels, a suitable outfit and a crash helmet and you lead him around the driveway. You keep on with this mentoring / building / supporting process until he is able to buy his own bike and win his own race. I am lucky to have such a mentor who is willing to pick men up and fix my bike each time I ride into a fence. The most important thing to remember about investment into entreprenuers is that investors not only invest in the idea, they also invest into the individual. No matter how good the idea is, if the entreprenuer does not have the right characterists that appeals to the investor, then no money will be forthcoming. How many of those people who stand before the dragons have absolutely no idea about the realities of taking their products to market, the realities of the numbers, the patents and the issues, yet they have dreamed up a round figure of the the investment that they need.

I am all for ideas, my personal problem is that I simply have to many that I am capable of doing (and being ADD means that I flit from idea to idea without ever taking one idea and wringing all the cash out of it) Too many ideas can be a very very bad thing that distracts one from having a very narrow focus. The only way for me to have that focus is to discard any idea that does not fit into my purposely narrow focus. I do write the really good ones and keep them for later evaluation.