WASHINGTON, D.C. — Barbara Corcoran has made investing seed capital in a barbecue sauce company almost as exciting as winning "American Idol."

Listening to pitches from aspiring entrepreneurs competing not only for her attention but her money as well, Corcoran has helped bring ABC's reality show "Shark Tank" to its fourth season, averaging 6.6 million viewers so far, according to ABC. Founder of real estate broker The Corcoran Group in New York, which she sold for $66 million in 2001, she balances out a team of bombastic and sometimes belligerent sharks like sports and media mogul Mark Cuban, FUBU founder Daymond John, tech entrepreneur Robert Herjavec and venture capitalist Kevin O'Leary. You can tune in to Shark Tank on ABC at 9 on Fridays. While Corcoran was in town to speak at the America's Small Business Summit hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, USA TODAY's Oliver St. John talked with her about her adventures in televised venture capital.

Q: Did you ever do any venture capital stuff before becoming a shark?

A: Never. Let me tell you something, investing in a field you know well is like breathing. It comes naturally. You have an instinct. You've done it your whole life. You know what's right, what's wrong, and what's questionable. The minute you go into somebody else's ballpark it gets really dangerous.

I spent most of the first season losing ever dollar I ever invested. The second season, I lost half the money I invested. By the third season I was investing less.

Q: What was your first big hit?

A: My first big hit was Pork Barrel BBQ Sauce. Two attorneys right here in Washington, D.C. They were peddling pork barrel spending for special interest groups, and running barbecues on the weekend. One of the principals, Keith, looks exactly like a pig. That is one thing I've learned about business, is if you have some sort of gimmick, it's a huge advantage. So I figured, "How bad could this business be with a guy heading it who looks like a pig?" And you wanna know, everyone remembers him. I've trained him. He walks in and he says, "Do you think I look like a pig?" And people of course all think he looks like a pig, but they all say, "No, you don't look like a pig," which they're lying. He looks just like an adorable pig. I don't even like barbecue sauce.

Q: Well, how'd you figure out the ins and outs of investing? How do you know how much these companies are worth?

A: Let me tell you something: I still don't know on Shark Tank what a company's worth. I don't believe in those evaluations. I think the total worth of the company is based on how good the entrepreneur is.

Q: So what's the most interesting business you've seen?

A: The wackiest business I was actually afraid to leave the set and use the ladies room. I was actually afraid I was going to be killed. That guy was a brilliant engineer who'd invented a technology to put Bluetooth surgically down the ear canal. He didn't move. He was like a robot. His lips hardly moved. He just stared at you. He was freaky, and the business itself was freaky. You had to have it surgically inserted; then, if anything went wrong or the battery went dead you had to surgically remove it.

Q: What about the least fundable business?

A: I would have said a very unfundable business was the wacky guy who drew cats. I can draw a cat for you. I can draw a cat for you. He had a little jingle. He was so memorable, and Mark Cuban bought his business for $150,000, and for what? What's he going to do with a guy who draws little cartoon cats? Well, guess what: He was making money with it. I looked at the guy and thought, "What a stupid business." Well, I was wrong, and Cuban was right. You see, you don't really know. You think you know, but you don't really know.

Q: Do you break even on Shark Tank?

A: No, I do not break even. I am still way in the hole for a couple million dollars, but it's unrealistic to expect to break even, because these are baby businesses, and they take three or four years to mature.

Q: Are the deals companies get for equity even good deals? Isn't it all just about the PR?

A: You're right about that. Even if they don't get the funding and they're on TV and they resonate with people at home, it's great for the business. They get discovered on prime-time TV. If they have a website, they sell like crazy. For a moment. Maintaining the sales is something else. Everybody falls in love with them if they have good charisma. For the ones that get bought, it's an amazing advantage. They not only get aired, they get rerun, usually two, three times more than year. They get updates another two, three. Think about it. They're getting anywhere from three to six prime-time four-minute commercials for free.

Q: What's the best way a business can get funding?

A: The best way for most businesses is family and friends who are going to be forgiving, who love you, and you don't have to show a return. If you give up equity in your company to an investor, I think the most important thing is to size up the investor, who they are, and what they are going to bring to the table.

You don't want a tough guy, because small business is tough enough. You want an advocate; you want someone with good connections. Even though you think you're getting funding, you're getting a partner, and you really want to think, "Does my partner fit my personality?"

Q: What about the folks on Shark Tank? Are they the right partners?

A: It depends. It depends which shark is with which entrepreneur. I could be a great partner for somebody and Daymond might be the worst partner. Daymond is a terrific partner to a number of businesses where I'm like, I could never even work with that guy. So it depends how the personalities match.

Q: What sort of personalties work with you?

A: You know what? I want someone who can take rejection. That's all I'm looking for. I'm not so tough on the show, but when the male sharks are beating somebody up, I love to watch, and I'm happy it's happening, because I'm really trying to size up if the entrepreneur is good at standing back up. If somebody's really beaten down, they're never going to make it as an entrepreneur, because succeeding in business has everything to do with how you take rejection.

Q: What advice do you have for the businesses out there looking for funding right now?

A: You want to know what the big news is in terms of funding? It's crowdfunding. I think a lot of people aren't aware how that's going to change things.

There's been something that's just been passed from the federal government. What they're going to do is let every joe on the street invest. It's the biggest thing to happen to small business. Now the little guy can invest right along with the big guy in any business he chooses without being a quote, "sophisticated investor." And that is so much needed. I never thought that thing was gonna pass. Things are looking up there.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Anything but college to try to get a job.

College no longer guarantees success or even a good enough job to pay back student loans. Thanks, but no thanks, some high school grads are starting to say to higher ed. Instead, some are starting their own businesses, working for free at companies to get experience, and flying out to conferences to network.

This comes at a time when unemployment for recent bachelor's recipients was still up to 12.6% as late as 2011, the most recent year available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a far cry from 2007's rate of 7.7%. If post-grad unemployment doesn't get much better, this trend could shake the foundations of America's 7,000-plus colleges and universities, which currently take in over $147 million each year in tuition and fees, according to the Department of Education.

Christopher Dalton is the 20-year-old owner of D Detailing, an auto care business he started in high school. He gave Middle Tennessee State University, based in Murfreesboro, the old college try before leaving after a semester to continue building his business. He says he now makes $150 an hour doing what he loves, and has nothing but big plans for the future.

"I said, why not take the same money that I'm spending in college and spend it on learning what I want to learn?" says Dalton, who has spent his time since he left school in January running his business and going to conferences to learn how to make it even better. He recently returned from a San Diego conference where he learned how to take dents out of cars, a service he'll now be able to offer at D Detailing. He felt happy about his decision to forgo school after connecting with other ambitious dropouts.

Peter Thiel, billionaire founder of PayPal and entrepreneur extraordinaire, wants more kids to be like Dalton, so much so that he pays 20 kids $100,000 not to go to college every year. Jonathan Cain, president of the Thiel Foundation, says a college degree no longer makes a résumé unique, and kids' time and money are best spent elsewhere.

That's not the point, says Jeff Selingo, author of forthcoming book College (Un)Bound, which argues why college is still important, and comes out in May. "Even if you don't get that first great job, it's the fifth job that matters. You really want an education that's going to get that fifth job, because that's the one that's going to make your career."

Selingo's advice to graduating seniors who might be on the fence about going to college: Go, but don't take on $100K of debt that you might never pay off. Sure, a college degree doesn't guarantee success like it used to, but most folks who don't have one are even worse off.

Alternatives to college:

• Learn from the pros. Instead of teachers and classes, The Mycelium School, founded by Matthew Abrams and launching its first class of 12-14 in September, brings in more than 150 visiting instructors, from designers at Google's Innovation Labs to best-selling authors to serial entrepreneurs, who impart real-world knowledge to participants. Participants get a collective $45,000 to build a business based around social change, a great way to learn both business savvy and the way communities work, Abrams says. Participants leave with entrepreneurial experience and a supportive network of more than 150 gurus in just about ever,y field from modern dance to venture capital.

• Work for free. Enstitute will set you up with a two-year mentorship with an entrepreneur in a tech start-up, a digital advertising firm or a non-profit. In addition to the 40-hour-a-week mentorships, program participants get weekly meet-and-greet sessions with business hotshots such as clothing designer Marc Ecko or Bitly chief scientist Hilary Mason. The hope is that after a two-year mentorship, participants will have all the skills, experience and connections they need to make it in the real world. "A lot of academia deals with the abstract and intellectual pontification," says co-founder Kane Sarhan. "My biggest problem with academia is there's no practicality to it whatsoever."

• Get connected. Blake Boles started the Zero Tuition College social network because he saw kids who weren't in college struggling to find a community in like-minded people. Members interact based on skills they want to learn and are able to teach. "The clear fact of the matter is that colleges have the monopoly on young adult social life," Boles says.

• Teach yourself. UnCollege, lead by Thiel Fellowship recipient Dale Stephens, 21, leads conferences rallying together kids who want to find success without having to go to college. UnCollege's first Gap Year program begins this September and covers everything from sending participants abroad for three months to helping them build their own companies. All the learning though, you've got to do yourself. Stephens says not going to college actually makes you a better learner, more mature, self-reliant, and motivated. Why's that? "This is because in college these things are taken care of and you're simply told what to do," says Stephens, who has never been to college.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.