[drpancake]

This echoes my experience at a UK university. The 'entrepreneurial' society is borderline inactive apart from the token yearly business plan competition.

Nobody really talks about startups. I've not met a single student who's planning to go it alone after graduation day, let alone drop out. Perhaps that's just the limited demographic occupied by my course mates and other friends.

However we do have Dragon's Den and people are clearly inspired by it - at least in principle. I do wonder whether it's had any affect on the number of startups.

[pmjordan]

I wouldn't exactly describe Dragon's Den as "inspiring" TBH. "Depressing" is the word that more readily springs to mind.

[zeemonkee]

I think its popularity derives more from the fun of seeing people humiliated and their dreams crushed, unfortunately.

[pmjordan]

Even when they do invest, it seems the valuations tend to be awfully low (and the equity stake of the investors far too high). Plus, you'd think that with TV budgets they could get participants some coaching on how to pitch.

Sorry to get carried away, I find the whole programme extremely disrespectful. :-/

[ig1]

I started writing a reply on here about why the stakes they take are reasonable, but it got fairly long winded so I stuck it up on my blog instead:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1811882

[drpancake]

I wouldn't go as far as depressing, but I agree that it's not a great show. But at least it raises awareness.