Simu Liu arrives at the premiere of Jackpot! in Los Angeles, on Aug. 13.Richard Shotwell
Canadian actor Simu Liu will be appearing as the first-ever guest investor on the Season 19 premiere of the CBC’s Dragons’ Den, airing this fall.
“I’m really, really looking forward to the pitches,” Liu said in a recent interview at the CBC’s downtown Toronto headquarters. “I hope that I get to sample things, I hope that I get up on my feet, and I get to experience products that would genuinely make my life and the lives of people around me better.”
Beyond starring in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Barbie and Kim’s Convenience, Liu has taken on a diverse investment portfolio, from soup-dumpling company MìLà to becoming general partner of the venture capital fund Markham Valley Ventures.
The opportunity for Liu to join the show arose when dragon Arlene Dickinson reached out. “I guess you could say she slid into my DMs,” Liu said.
At that time, Liu said, he was in the midst of starting up a venture fund, and had made a couple of angel investments in businesses he believed in. So investing was something he was naturally starting to embrace, he said.
“It does sometimes feel like all roads lead back to Canada in some way, shape, or form,” he said. “And so it was an opportunity to come home, and to be a part of a show that I loved.”
The actor will sit next to the newest permanent member of the Dragons’ Den panel, Brian Scudamore, who founded the trash removal service 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and joined the show after the departure of Vincenzo Guzzo and Robert Herjavec.
Scudamore applied to be an investor twice, including for the first season of the show. “For me, this time it was: I have money to invest, I have more time to give and 35 years of experience having built three different businesses that I think I get it a different way,” Scudamore said. “To be a little tiny part of that panel of dragons that get to champion entrepreneurship I think is pretty awesome.”
Scudamore said one of the most important things entrepreneurs who come on the show can do is listen to the feedback and learn from the dragons’ expertise.
“When the pitcher doesn’t listen and they go on defence, you can tell that they’re not necessarily going to make it as an entrepreneur,” Scudamore said.
When he wanted to franchise his business, he had experts tell him it couldn’t be done. He asked them why and what he could change to fulfill his franchising ambitions, he added.
Both Scudamore and Liu said they are looking to invest in people, rather than ideas or products.
“Even a great product can fail because it doesn’t have the right engine behind it,” Liu said. “I want to get to know the people who are pitching, I want to know who they are, I want to know what makes them get up in the morning, what their dreams are, what their goals are for the business.”
Scudamore said the dragons had recently been pitched by two entrepreneurs who could have been selling anything and they would have made a deal.
“They were so incredibly focused and believed in themselves and believed in their ideas that I had to back ‘em,” said Scudamore.
He says the other dragons have coached him, encouraged him and provided him with frank feedback on how to succeed on the show and make deals.
“And we’ve had so many laughs, like, I think almost at the end of every pitch, there’s a set of laughs and sometimes it’s tired giggles, sometimes it’s us just ripping into each other and giving each other the gears but it has been so much fun.”
Season 19 of Dragons’ Den begins on Sept. 26 on the CBC.