Make Me a Millionaire Inventor Advisers Deanne Bell and George Zaidan
CNBC will debut a new show tonight called Make Me a Millionaire Inventor. The show is hosted by what the creators call advisers – Deanne Bell, a Mechanical Engineer, and George Zaidan, a Chemist. (You can read their full Bios below)
Each show has two mainstream inventions or improvements on current products featured – one for each host. The readiness for market ranges from early concept to fully patented and ready to pitch to backers products.
Now many of you might be thinking this sounds like Shark Tank, but the show runs a more causal pace and gives much more behind the scenes drama and insight to guidance, such as structuring a business plan, producing and market-testing a prototype, and preparing them for a pitch to be ready to meet real world potential investors and industry buyers who can make or break the product by investing their own money and resources to bring them to market.
First to bat on the show is Samantha DeMaria with a new twist on chocolate fountains called the Marinara Tower. She is eight months pregnant at the time of the taping and is from Hoffman Estate, IL.
A major difference which sets Make Me a Millionaire Inventor apart from both Shark Tank and The Profit with Marcus Lemonis is the the advisers ability to bring in their staff from BlueFish Concepts to aid in reworking designs and give advice on how to make the product more manufacturing friendly to grow the margin of the item.
For Samantha’s pitch the show brought in two potential investors. Brian Cassidy, CiCi’s vice president of operations, who offers his insights to the creator from a commercial restaurant operator’s perspective. Steve Viscusi who is a CEO of his own investment group also was in attendance for the pitch. He has Italian restaurants and and consults with owners.
The second product is by best friends Anthony Gonzales and Bob Merriman, of Cypress, CA, who are pitching the Fit Guard, a high-tech mouth guard designed to alert athletes if a hit they just took could have caused a concussion.
In another example of setting the show apart from other invention shows, Deanne takes Gonzales and Merriman with their guard over to Dr. Cynthia Bir’s lab injury prevention center lab at USC for testing.
At the end of their journey Anthony and Bob get to pitch to Chris Burch, founder of Tory Burch Apparel, who now also has his own venture capital firm and Kim Reed Perel, president of Amobee*, technology start-up veteran.
Should You Invest Your Time on the Show?
While the premiere needs some fine tuning, it is great business reality TV and worth the time to watch. The show has great promise to get stronger over time. Make Me a Millionaire Inventor gives CNBC a trifecta of business reality TV shows! (Along with The ProfitIt and Shark Tank reruns) Make Me a Millionaire Inventor provides the network a different voice on the subject and possibly even a new audience of makers coming to the network’s fold.
We hope CNBC will give the show second season with more episode!
When to Watch
The six-episode series, produced by CNBC and ALL3MEDIA (creators of Undercover Boss and Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsey).
Background on the Hosts
Deanne Bellis is an engineer, television host, and the founder of FutureEngineers.org, a platform that hosts national invention challenges for students. She received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis. In 2006, Deanne took her first job in television as a co-host for the Peabody Award winning children’s series, “Design Squad.”
George Zaidan is a science educator, television and web host, producer, and card-carrying nerd. He has developed, written, and hosted shows for The Weather Channel, National Geographic, MIT, and The Pentagon Channel; he also has written and voiced several TED-Ed viral videos. George graduated Phi Beta Kappa from MIT with an B.S in Chemistry and the F.D. Greene Teaching Award.
*Correction Notice – The post has been edited to have Kim Reed Perell as the President of Amobee. The first version of this story had her as the president of Amovee.
