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Lessons Learned from a Shark Tank Survivor (neiljoglekar.com)
40 points by njoglekar on Jan 28, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments


How would you address their concern that you should have been able to raise 250k from SV VCs? Also, Shark Tank valuations seem so low compared to Valley (or YC) valuations that I'm curious how you came up with the offered terms.


I did answer it, but they edited it out. I think it probably deserves another post.


A former client was on Shark Tank. The pitch in-studio was 2.5 hours and of course only 7 minutes was aired. The interest it generated (in terms of downloads) was enormous. It nearly filled the Heroku database during the show - which we quickly upgraded after it aired.

A good metaphor for the negotiations before and after airing and the actual on-air pitch is an iceberg. 5% is visible on-air and 95% of the interactions with the sharks and their team is never public. What actually happens in terms of an investment may never be made public - from promise to make a deal that falls apart to an on-air rejection that is later turned around into an investment.


I that's a pretty apt description - there is a lot that goes into this behind the scenes.


I find that Shark Tank is a great learning experience just from a viewers prospective. I think, even with the added dramatic flare, that you can learn a lot from the 5 sharks that are sitting in that room at any given time. It is an enjoyable free class on entrepreneurship, as well as a view inside the mind of a millionaire to billionaire that one does not get access to very easily.

Unfortunately I think a large amount of that education is lost on the general TV watching public.


Unfortunately, it is not free. You have to have cable to watch it in most cases.


Its on ABC. You don't need to pay for cable for access to ABC.


You can usually watch at least the last 3 - 5 episodes on either Hulu or ABC streaming. Also if you live in most major cities, you can also get it for free via old school antenna.


I don't watch much TV so I had to check wikipedia for the show. The reruns are exclusive to CNBC, but the prime time show is on ABC.


The pajama idea seemed to play pretty well for you, I noticed it when watching the episode. All of the sharks seemed surprised by both of your backgrounds after the first impression.

How much of a bump in sales/interest have you gotten from being on Shark Tank?


I'm not sure if it was cut out but you didn't seem to explain how your product determines the appropriate time to wake you up.


I wish i knew what the hell he's talking about, but ABC doesn't like dirty foreigners being interested in their content it seems.


More likely the production company (Mark Burnett or whoever's running it nowadays) did not negotiate the overseas licensing with ABC.




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