His business plan was a shambles that kept being edited to make it less ridiculous

He failed as PM

He was invisible on many tasks

His adverting campaign and pitch weren't just inferior to Vanas but bad too

I disagree with virtually everything you have posted there.

Disagree, Vana's wasn't any better in fact worse in lots of ways. Her only decent feature was the pitch. The fact she claimed to have great knowledge of the industry, was let down by the fact she didn't know how much it cost to launch and support an app!! Which was her only feature and couldn't be tweaked or worked around. Joe's at least could be scaled, didn't need a hugh future capital investment, and would return profits, virtually from day one.

Indeed. There was only one winner for me. Vana could have gone through the whole 250k in a couple of months, Joe might not make Lord Sugar a fortune but he's unlikely to lose it all either.

True, and I think the idea of a safe business has potential, all you need is one idea that revolutionises a bit of existing kit and put it together with this business and you are laughing all the way to the bank.

High risk/ high reward only works if there is a market, and Vana's idea didn't seem to have that.

I thought Vana's proposal was crap and destined to fail in an already oversaturated love app market. When it comes to apps and social media stuff, people tend to stick to what is already "tried and tested" and has the most members, so the likes of Tindr/match.com/POF etc will continue to lead the way for the foreseeable.

In that regard he was no better or worse than most of the other candidates. And Vana might have stood a better chance if she'd altered course somewhat on her idea, instead of just keeping with it and throwing in "Oh, and by the way, I'll have to find another quarter-million at some point" at the end.


So did Vana. And she didn't even have a win under her belt, whereas Joseph did.


Vana was flat-out awful on at least three of the tasks (in Weeks 1, 3 and 10).


I actually don't entirely disagree with that, but Vana's plan being better-presented doesn't really count for much when it's far too expensive to feasibly work with Lord Sugar's investment.

Another problem I saw with Vana's, was the fact she was pitching to potential competitors, so they're hardly likely to support the idea and secondly give it a year and you'll see them with the same sort of app, if they think it has legs.

^^ and lets not forget her pitch should be better, she comes from that world, Joe's a "grease monkey" and has no experience in that field, but at least his pitch was honest and not full of "bullsh•t".

I think Vana was extremely lucky not to go in week 3 personally.

I'm not sure Eharmony and Match would be too worried about a competitor with only £250k to spend.

So all he needs now is to come up with a revolutionary idea and he's got it made. That's genius. Sadly there wasn't any such thing in his business plan and also nothing of the sort in the constantly changing plans the producer tried cobbling together for him after ditching the ludicrous franchise idea.

Sadly Spivvy Joe's House Bashers Ltd is as small potatoes as they come. His UPS was his tash but he shaved that off. His original business plan was more or less the same as the hair dresser girl, and they fired her for that.

I'm not even saying that Vana's idea was any better, it wasn't, but you could likely throw a dart into the plumbing section of the Yellow Pages and find someone with more knowledge of the M&E contracting industry than Joseph.

^^really, give it a year and surprise surprise, they'll come out with an app like hers, in fact she'd be better off licensing the thing to them.

And don't forget Blockbuster told Netflix to do one, when Netflix offered to sell their business to them, look how that turned out. Business history is littered with larger companies ignoring smaller competitors.

He doesn't need a revolutionary idea, just a good business. It isn't about coming up with an amazing idea no-one has ever thought of, it's about making money.

^^ I think he's going to go down the app route himself, once he's grown a bit

He doesn't need to come up with it. You have a safe business, it might notr set the world alight, but it does okay. One day someone may come up with the new idea, and you're the first on board with it, that's all it takes.

Bad strategy and poor execution, OP.

You're fired.

That's the Grand Slam complete! X factor, Strictly, SPOTY and now the Apprentice, all "fixed". I don't know why some people bother to watch TV anymore!

That's one aspect I found bizarre. You really expect people to give an honest answer to someone who wants to become your competitor...?

The quickest way to stop someone from doing something is to tell them it's very hard and very expensive. And then launch your own version.

Cynicism points the other way. The best R&D for the big players is to have lots of smaller competitors and buy any that look like taking off. In other words, give sincere and helpful advice to Vana and if she does get anything like the 400,000 users she forecast, just offer Lord Sugar a big sack of cash.

Eharmony had £3m to start with and that was years ago when there was no established players in the market. They knew Vana had little to zero chance of taking off and if she did they would just buy it off her.

To me, the business plan that needed tweaking is proof of the exact opposite. If they had a predetermined winner surely they'd base that decision on the factor they could control - i.e. a solid business plan.
The real explanation is Lord Sugar has been desperate for a winner like Joseph for years.
A young man with no qualifications, no prospects, who through sheer pluck and determination is starting to make something of himself after all. (Arguably a young version of Alan)
Problem is most of the candidates in this mould have turned out to be useless.(Like Mergim) A half way credible version of this sort of candidate was always in with a good chance.

I dont think so, infact he was like the last one i would have thought would have won. I expected it to be Brett or Richard. Vanas prob was she needed more funding then they were supplying which makes me wonder why they let her get so far if that was going to be a problem?

None of the business plans were rock solid - Varnas was a potential moneypit, exapnding a plumbing business is a guaranteeed money maker.

He won one task as PM, lost the property task (but didn't do too badly). Vana lost her only task as PM.

Both Vana and Joseph changed their plan emphasis during the final. Joseph through listening to feedback, Vana to try and cover the hole in the finances. Change isn't a bad thing if the plan is improved and Joseph's plan became much more solid and attractive throughout the final.

What turned things for me was the way he used his focus group as a networking session. I could only see one winner after that. Vana just has an idea (with no proper costings). Joseph was super impressive

Yes his billboard and video weren't the best but his pitch was as good as Vana's and in the end his personal credibility won the day. The industry figures seemed very impressed with his character.

Of all the candidates Joseph grew and developed the most over the whole process. His speech to Lord Sugar as to why he should be hired was nothing short of brilliant.

I disagree that his pitch was awful. People said that he was very clear, articulate, passionate and personable. His industry is totally different to Vana's, so straight-talking probably goes down better than flashy graphics. He even got himself some business cards (I'm not sure the Apprentice cameras were not a helpful factor in that, but hey they didn't tell him to eff off).