Dragons' Den

Dragons' Den is a reality television program format in which entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to a panel of venture capitalists in the hope of securing investment finance from them. The program originated in 2001 in Japan, where it is known as The Tigers of Money (Japanese: マネーの虎, romanized: manē no tora), a pun on "The Tiger of Malaya" (マレーの虎, marē no tora), which was the nickname of WWII general Tomoyuki Yamashita.^[1] The format was created and is owned by Nippon TV and is distributed by Sony Pictures Television.

Local versions of the show have been produced in over 40 countries, as well as one for the Arab world and Morocco; in some countries, more than one version has been aired. The first version to air outside of Japan was the British programme Dragons' Den, which launched in 2005; in the several years afterward, most versions named themselves Dragons' Den or variations thereof, though some also used other animals in the title, such as lions. Since the launch of the U.S. version of the show, Shark Tank, in 2009, many versions have been named Shark Tank or variations thereof. In versions where the name of the show contains a creature's name, the investors are referred to by that name. The Israeli version of the show, HaKrishim ("The Sharks"), was the first to use the "shark" moniker, during its launch in 2006.