Prove what otherwise? I said IF the news about Leah is true.

London and the home counties seems like an obvious first step and more than enough business in London alone.


Yeah it's madness isn't it, really hard to believe! Apparently Bianca's been working on the idea for years but had never even considered a name - just bizarre.

Interesting about the interview prog - would try to find it but can't be bothered to watch the whole thing back.


When they were brainstorming in the office it sounded like James said 'climb online' and Mark said something like 'climb online's good'. It didn't come across like that but perhaps it was already what Mark had in mind, had mentioned to the others, and the list James reels off includes it and Mark finally decides to settle for it

Well, there's different ways of measuring profitability depending on what accountancy methods and tricks you use and it also depends on the time period you are looking at.

Accountancy games are played to reduce the amount of tax payable. No amount of playing with figures will produce a profit where there isn't one.

I'm surprised at the naivety of the comments here. A new business costs money to get up and running, that, surprising as it might sound, is why people chase the banks, Dragons and Sugar for seed money. The initial funding won't produce a profit as it mostly goes on capital expenditure, like shops, computers, desks, pots 'n pans, initial stock, etc etc. It can often take a long time to pay back that expenditure. For tax purposes, a lot of that spending is used to create a book loss.

Indeed. The last company I worked in had 'minuses' all over the accounts but they operated hugely expensive assets and were also owned by equity companies, who use all manner of methods to make the books look incomprehensible to laypeople like me but which look marvellous to a buyer.

Fact is, it was worth billions and just sold for billions. Buyers weren't looking just at the bottom line, they're looking at EBITDA, capex, assets, etc.

And as someone above said, poor cash flow can kill even a decent business with a strong order book.

It's naive to say she made a loss in year 1, as if the disposable net profit of a start-up is the only measure of success, when the VALUE of her business could be impressive. I'm no expert but this much I've learned.

Would I be too wide off the mark to suggest that his plan may be for him to intend to use the clients on the database he used for his previous employer?

And it's quite ironic that if you type 'climbonline' into Google's search engine it appears right at the very top of the search list.

http://www.climbonline.co.uk/

http://www.climbonline.com/ is currently 6th. But only because the four search results above it are associated with this series of The Apprentice, otherwise it would be 2nd.

One thing which brings into question his business plan is that he didn't bother to buy the domain name long before he took part in the show.
I would have thought that would be something you would do very early on to ensure that other potential competitors didn't take your name as their domain name.

Anyway, it's good news for the two rock climbing websites who already had the name before him. Business must be booming for them. Unfortunately Mark won't earn a penny.

Funnily enough I've just found this website which is the same sort of digital marketing business as Mark's and makes use of the tagline 'climb online'.
Is this Mark's business website or somebody else's?

http://www.extradigital.co.uk/articl...mb-online.html

If there were no clauses in his last employment contract prohibiting this (usually for a given time period), then yes he could. But his previous employer would have to be very silly to have an account/sales manager on a contract with no anti-competition clauses.

My problem with Mark's model harks back to the discussion in here about the value of a business. In a crowded space and without a USP, his model relies entirely on him, either delivering himself (rather than managing the business) or having great talent spotting/talent management skills, and the process didn't test those. If Sugar ever wants to cash in his chips and Mark isn't part of the deal, it may have no value.

That said, the personal account manager per client is a differentiator, but since that only seemed to come up as an idea during Sanjay's market research, we don't know if Mark has really thought it through. Again it relies on him nurturing great talent. And it may not be viable if his profit model relies on volume.

I can see Mark making a tidy salary for himself but I can't see (yet) big yields for Sugar.

This happened to an Indian restaurant in our town, they had even printed thousands of leaflets with the web address on it without buying it.

The leaflet got into the hands of the competing Indian restaurant two doors down who realised what they had(n't) done, bought the domain name themselves and now, if you visit the site, it redirects you to theirs!

What's more is that AS rejected Katie's business plan, and one main reason was on the grounds that she isn't a cook. He gave her a hard time over that issue.
But Mark comes with another business plan and essentially states the same, that other people would do the work. And AS doesn't seem to be bothered at all.

One of the problems with this show is inconsistencies such as this and an imbalance of how candidates are treated by AS when compared like for like..

Oh no. That's an utter disaster.

I remember an American campaign by a Telco that was hijacked in part by its main rival, the manin ad asked people to dial something like 800 OPERATOR the rival bought 800 OPERATER and relied on the public's inability to spell, a trick that followed on to SEO with people buying misspelt domain names and key words.