Doug Richard

In terms of my own portfolio, better than expected. My life is composed of getting involved with early stage high-risk, hightech businesses, and if I look across the portfolio of businesses that I’m involved in, most of the bad things have already happened - the ones that remain are doing pretty well and those that were struggling and unable to access funding have already fallen.

Only in the sense that the credit crunch has had an impact on every part of the business spectrum, including the venture capital industry which has virtually come to a standstill and stopped investing. What that means is that any company needing investment in the last four months has largely been unable to access funding even if they were doing well, so both good and bad companies have gone under, as a sort of accident of timing. If you don’t need funding right now then you’re fine until you do and the hope for these types of businesses now is that they have enough to see them through the business cycle. I suppose I’m grateful in that all the businesses I’m active in right now are in that position.

Tough call. The venture capitalists will continue to back companies they’ve already invested in and if they already have an investment they’re not relying on anyone else to support those companies, rather they’re just relying on themselves. So I think you’ll see some people claiming they’re investing again but really it’s just supporting companies they’ve already invested in. You’ll see some activity over the next few quarters but in terms of when the venture capitalists actively start investing again I think it’s going to be a long time.

I think in the context of the credit crunch, which started the problem and remains the issue, no the government hasn’t been effective but it’s not for a lack of trying. The unfortunate reality is that the government has been doing many of the right things but shooting itself in the foot at the same time.

For example Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently announced an insurance package to help banks cover the toxic debt which in itself is as good an idea as any other floating around the western economies. But he also said he wouldn’t let the banks get away with it and so he added a moral component to it and in so doing the shares stalled enormously because the shareholders had a look at the offer he was making and assumed they were going to get screwed. So in reality he’s shot himself in the foot.

Until Gordon Brown starts to understand economics as well as politics I suspect that you’ll find that perfectly reasonable programmes will be unsuccessful.

I don’t think he’s capable of doing that and until he does you will continue to see a political tension with economic necessity.

Firstly I’d like to say that I’m a huge Obama supporter, but not necessarily because of his economic policies. I voted for Obama for lots of reasons, but its never been proven that pumping large amounts of capital into an economy actually works in bringing that economy out of a recession. Having said that, I’m not saying I’m absolutely opposed to this policy because there is a lot to be said for stimulating demand, but the huge stimulus package announced in the US will not in itself solve the problem, its just part of a series of things that can be done.

If you look at history, the US government bailed out the savings and loans banks and in doing so created what was essentially a toxic debt bank. And although it took 25 years the US government did eventually make a profit on that debt even though you very rarely here that reported in the media. There is a series of things which can be done but the biggest impact that Obama has is essentially ceremonial. You can’t underline the fact that a great deal of an economy rests on confidence, so a new president, especially Barack Obama, and a change of government will definitely help if things go Obama’s way.

I also see the US economy coming out of a recession before the UK economy, which will help the UK economy, as the financial interrelations between our economies which has in part caused the recession will help both countries to pull out of it.

I think we’ll take some and that has already been taken. The main thing is that inactivity didn’t work, and there was a huge period of inactivity when the crisis first emerged. Trade protectionism during the great depression actually accentuated the great depression and there are elements of trade protectionism in Obama’s proposed policies, but buying American could create issues for the US if other countries start doing the same thing so hopefully we’ve learned our lesson. The US is going to keep going down and then come up quite resoundingly, where as the UK economy is much more fragile. The UK has the potential to suffer badly with inflation, more so than many other Western economies, it was weaker going into the recession and it has a productive economy that rests on very few things. The continuing lack of housing stock is creating a floor for demand which is also coming home to roost.

Yes and no - I think there are greater similarities that there are differences. Obviously the US is a much larger country so companies in the US have a much larger domestic market on their doorstep which means that the potential market for any startup is much bigger, giving it better growth potential. Also because the US is a much younger country than the UK the infrastructure for distributing goods and services is much more efficient, which again increases the potential for growth. It’s not a case that the US is ‘better’ than the UK, just that businesses there have better opportunities. However, some of the differences are stark. For example in Wales I think somewhere in the region of 70% of people work for the public sector. This means that if only around 30% of the workforce are in private enterprise then the creation of wealth in the economy is extremely limited and after all the government is funded by the wealth created in the private sector. I think we need more entrepreneurship here in the UK.

The report wasn’t well received by a lot of people. My primary concern after reviewing the entire measure of support for small businesses and entrepreneurship in the UK was the vast percentage of money spent was either of no value or was impossible to value because nobody had done anything to measure it. Therefore, it was subject to the suspicion that it had no value.

Unfortunately that’s a damning indictment of an entire infrastructure system. It suggests very strongly that the only thing business support programmes provided by the UK government, either centrally or through devolved government, are essentially just creating jobs for people to enter a new industry - the business support industry. You end with an industry that is existent in itself.

Lots of companies have set up here with little or no regard of whether they actually do anything. So it would probably be better if a lot of that stopped, meaning a lot of people would be put out of work, but they would be put out of a type of work that wasn’t doing anything anyway. The vast majority of the report has been accepted by the Conservatives as part of their policy platform. Interestingly enough events have moved on since I produced the report but some constants remain. I think entrepreneurship can be taught, I think it starts culturally and therefore has to start in our schools. And I think we have to remove the moral question i.e. it’s OK for people to make a profit and be successful and they have to be able to enjoy the fruits of the wealth they create. We should celebrate their achievements.

There’s something very counter intuitive about a them they should spend less which of course makes a recession worse but it’s the natural thing to do and I’m absolutely not criticising anyone that does. At the same time it also reminds people in a forceful and sometimes life changing way that you can’t rely on a job with a big company no matter how big it is. We forget that lesson every generation. That’s why we need to keep creating and training entrepreneurs, such as self employed professionals like plumbers, for example.

When the shows producers started putting the show together they got in touch with some Venture Capitalists who were friends of mine and they declined the offer but suggested my name to the producers and I decided to give it a go.

No. I thought that it would be a flash in the pan and then disappear. I mean I thought what business show could possibly be popular. Why do you think that Dragon’s Den caught the public’s imagination in the way it did? That’s a good question. I think that it’s the first time anyone has distilled those frightening and tense moments in business onto a TV screen. Also the fact that the show was real, with real investors and real entrepreneurs putting-up real money made the show a captivating thing to watch.

Most of them are done, as in they have either failed or just muddled along but there is one business that is reasonably successful so it worked out alright - it could have been worse!

Yes. Many people will probably remember a gentleman that developed a new way of growing truffles, well he went on to later success, although unfortunately I didn’t invest in him but I always regretted that I hadn’t.