Never seen this before last night - I was so shocked at how poor people's grasp of the numbers was!!! Nothing against them, but I think you'd have to be mad to ask for investment without knowing what your turnover and profit was.
I think it's quite simple why the numbers are so bad. Many people start businesses without a clear profit-making idea (more "I'd love to make cheese" or "I want to be my own boss, I'm quite good at X, I could do that freelance" - where it should be "what pain am I able to resolve and how much is that worth to people?").
Very few are business and/or finance savvy enough to really understand how they are doing for a surprisingly long period - often up to 5 years IME, until they crash. During that time they judge how things are going on the basis of how busy they are, or how much they have in their bank account. (!!!)
Frequently they will accept losses/poor cashflow (or to them, not enough in the bank account) for an extended period, because they are emotionally attached to the business or the idea of being a businessperson/entrepreneur etc. They bail themselves out with equity in their homes, pensions, borrowing from family etc, in the heartfelt belief that it will turn out OK. The crash only comes when they have exhausted those resources and finally have their backs against the wall.
(This from my background in corporate recovery btw!)
So I don't think it's uncommon at all for wannabe "entrepreneurs" not to have a clue about the numbers - even when their business has been running quite a while. They are just unlikely to make it, because they don't knwo the commercial reality of what's going on, soon enough to take corrective action.
The refrigeration guys, however will probably do quite well, they had a clear business idea and although I wonder whether they can really compete in a mature market, they knew their numbers well enough to inspire confidence.
They pretty much said that they'd invest in the sauce guy for a bit of fun more than anything else - when you've made your first few million I guess you can have amusement investments as well as profitable ones! And with those guys on board, and a bit of business assistance, he may well be quite successful as a niche producer.
Good programme, will be watching next week!
B