Shark Tank Dubai is back with its second season, and this time, Matt Higgins, CEO and co-founder of RSE Ventures, has officially joined the season as a guest Shark. With an impressive multi-billion-dollar investment portfolio of over 100 leading brands, scaling unicorns across sports and entertainment, media and marketing, consumer, and technology industries, Higgins brings his unique insights and expertise to the show. 

Since he first stepped foot in the UAE, Higgins says he has been struck by the entrepreneurial spirit and how everyone is aligned in fostering a culture of experimentation and innovation and “lowering the bar” for taking risks. 

Higgins, who will compete for deals with UAE investors, including Faisal Belhoul, Amira Sajwani, Elie Khouri, and Adel Sajan, in Shark Tank Dubai, says the emirate is in the middle of a tremendous startup boom and feels like a giant lab. 

“The culture is nurturing of risk-taking and has become a petri dish of experimentation. One of the great differences between the UAE and other municipalities is that the government is always looking for ways to facilitate experimentation and innovation, which de-risks starting a business and encourages entrepreneurship.”

KILLING IDEAS

While Dubai nurtures the entrepreneurial dream, founders must focus on innovating as markets, economics, and products change without fearing failure. Higgins says the goal of any founder should be to “cannibalize their own dream.” 

“If you start that way, you’ll never mourn the death of all your initial assumptions. When you look at all the founders that have been extraordinarily successful, somebody like Jeff Bezos, they have no problem killing their own ideas, but they never stop there. They’re the ones who are ushering in a new vision of the world.”

There’s grief and struggle when founders want everything to remain static. “Equilibrium is an illusion. Humans are either ascending or descending, and entrepreneurs need to always be ascending, or their business will start descending,” he adds. 

REFUSING TO DIE

Higgins, who went from cleaning tables at a fast-food restaurant to becoming a self-made millionaire, says the one thing differentiating successful people from those who aren’t is refusing to die. “I know we look for a more complicated formula in life and business, but the reality is that if you just refuse to die, you never will—metaphorically speaking.” 

“Every single business I’ve ever been involved with has faced an existential crisis threatening to extinguish that dream,” he adds. “The only reason it made it to the other side is that there was a propellant at the top of that business, a champion who, against all odds, refused to die.” 

Besides being a self-made founder and investor, Higgins, an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School and the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Burn the Boats, says his life has been architected with that philosophy in mind. 

“When I had nothing, I was completely desperate. I made the most radical decision of my life: dropping out of high school to get to college at 16. That single decision to not succumb to my circumstances is why I ended up running two NFL teams, becoming a recurring shark on Shark Tank, and teaching at Harvard Business School.” 

According to Higgins, the greatest quality of successful entrepreneurs and billionaires is that you can identify the moments in their lives where they refuse to die, even though most people would have waved the white flag of surrender.

In his case, the mindset helped him earn the role of youngest mayoral press secretary in New York history at age 26, going from making $35,000 to $100,000 per year.

In 2012, he co-founded RSE Ventures, which helped make him a millionaire. 

He says that founders often feed into risk aversion by raising the bar to take the first step. “That’s the opposite of what you should do. You don’t have to have it all figured out; you just have to make the next best decision.”

A GLOBAL DREAM

For many fans, Shark Tank, the ABC show that for 15 years has had aspiring entrepreneurs use hustle, gross margins, and pitches to get the Sharks to invest in their companies, reflect the shifting contours of the entrepreneurial economy and its build-at-all-costs mentality. The show is also a real exposure. It is not the advice or money the Sharks dispense, but serving as a platform for business strategies and innovative ideas.

Higgins says the show represents the global, not just the American dream.

“We’re all just people at the end of the day, and we share in common a desire to leave our mark on the world and to achieve freedom and independence. There are many ways to do that, but the one I’ve found to be most effective is to start your own business.” 

He continues, “Shark Tank has encouraged people to take a chance on their big ideas and start their own venture.” 

As he joins Shark Tank Dubai Season 2, one thing Higgins is looking for in this year’s crop of potential entrepreneurs to invest in is cash-flowing businesses. 

“In this part of the world, I’m less familiar with the types of businesses that receive venture interest (and potentially an exit), so I’d much rather invest in a cash-flowing business where I have a reasonable path to getting that investment back.” 

In terms of what he’s looking for in an entrepreneur, he says, “You want entrepreneurs who have a unique blend of confidence and humility – humble enough to acknowledge they don’t have all the answers, but confident enough to believe they’re going to find them.”