'Be Confident When You Ask Someone For Money': Shaq Gives His Best Advice to Student Entrepreneurs On the new show, "The Grind," Shaquille O'Neal leads a group of investors and mentors looking for the next big idea.
By Dan Bova
Shaquille O'Neal is a busy man. The four-time NBA champion is a broadcaster, a partner in multiple franchises, an investor, a philanthropist, and an educator. And all of those pieces come together in his latest project, The Grind, a three-episode YouTube series that features entrepreneurial students of the online teaching platform Campus competing for $60,000 in prize money.
"We wanted to give these kids and young adults a chance to pitch," Shaq told Entrepreneur for an upcoming episode of the How Success Happens podcast. "We wanted to see grit, resilience, determination, and belief, and they came up with some great ideas. It was great to see."
The show was filmed at Campus investor Joe Lonsdale's home in Austin, and Shaq was joined by judges Jennifer Hyman (CEO of Rent the Runway) and Poppy Thorpe (Snapchat board member) to help make the big money decision.
While the spirit of the show is about nurturing new ideas and encouraging talent, it was not all lovey-dovey. The students were put through a competitive admissions process to get on the show, and throughout the three-part series, they went through intensive workshops and rigorous pitch practice sessions.
Shaq routinely advised competitors to calm their nerves when it came time to ask for funding. " I was speaking from experience," Shaq explains. "When you come into somebody's world and want to borrow their money, you have to be confident. You gotta speak to the experts and know the ins and outs of your business. I do my due diligence so I can really understand what I'm asking for. You don't want to go into a meeting with Jeff Bezos and just ask for a hundred million dollars. You want Jeff to understand your business and what you will do with that money. You want him to believe in you."
The entire season is up now — binge to find out who walks away with a life-changing investment!
