Prime-Time Lessons in Entrepreneurship

Appearing on Shark Tank has become a rite of passage—and a catapult to success—for dozens of food entrepreneurs since ABC launched the prime-time celebration of entrepreneurship nearly 15 years ago. Watching the face of “Mr. Wonderful,” Kevin O’Leary, as he takes a first bite is good television, and one of the show’s frequent guest hosts, Daniel Lubetzky, is a bona fide role model as founder of KIND Snacks.

“I thought it would be a great way to bring the brand to a great audience and get essentially free publicity, and if you get the money, it’s a bonus,” says Margaret Nyamumbo, who struck a deal to sell 7% of her Kahawa 1893 specialty coffee brand for $350,000 to guest investor Emma Grede. “We were lucky enough to get money and a partner we love.”

But pitching their products on Shark Tank doesn’t always work out for the fledgling entrepreneurs who make slick presentations meant to solicit generous investment offers from the “sharks,” and maybe offers of personal mentorship. Some startups leave empty-handed—or worse because an iconic entrepreneur has bashed their business model.

Burlap & Barrel sells single-origin spices that it procures around the world, but founder Ethan Frisch didn’t notch a deal on the show. “The real prize of being on Shark Tank is the exposure,” he says. “It’s Friday night in prime time and four million-plus people are watching. That’s why we did it.”

Shark Tank producers didn’t respond to a request for a comment, but here’s a compendium of advice from participants and others about how to make the most of the show experience:

Expect a slog. Show producers have high expectations from beginning to end. The application process is “very demanding, with lots of written descriptions, financial information, video pitches, and multiple drafts,” Frisch says. “We probably did a dozen versions that went back and forth.”

Preparation is crucial. Frisch and his family “camped out in a little beach bungalow in Los Angeles for a week before the taping, preparing with flash cards, practiced lines, and a crafted pitch,” he says. “We did mock interviews with friends who’d been on the show and talked to a dozen companies leading up to the taping.”

Reach fever pitch. Hank Watt kept his preamble short because he knew the most important part of his pitch was to have the sharks actually taste and experience his company’s ledidi berries, which produce phenomenal sensations in the mouth when paired with certain other foods. The berries contain a glycoprotein molecule that binds to taste receptors on the tongue, temporarily converting sour, tart, or fermented notes to sweet flavors, he explains.

“I couldn’t have scripted it better, because they went head over heels for the experience,” says Watt, who ended up selling 20% of his Nature’s Wild Berry company to sharks Lori Greiner and Mark Cuban for $80,000 in a 2023 show. “Lori said her unsweetened cranberry juice was awful, but after eating the berry, it was delicious.”

Samuel Taylor had a theater background, so he and his wife “pulled out all the stops we could bring to a show—we had David Schwimmer, we had acrobatics, we had a love story, we had popcorn,” says the founder of Long Table Pancakes. He also brought “the best pancakes the sharks said they’d ever had.”

Know your fundamentals. “Shark Tank investors are looking for clear, data-backed evidence of our business’s potential,” says Shaunak Amin, cofounder of SwagMagic, a corporate swag startup, and a former food entrepreneur. “It’s not just about what your idea can be; it’s about what it already is. [That’s why] the panel typically asks, ‘What are your numbers?’”

Some Shark Tank participants advised focusing on the Q&A grilling after their prepared presentations, because that’s where sharks are often won over. And not entirely surprisingly, knowing their business inside and out is a strength of most entrepreneurs. “When I walked into the Tank, I had already done so many sales calls that I had my numbers down and was ready to overcome one objection after another,” Watt recalls.

But don’t forget this, show veterans advise: Having a firm grasp on your finances may be the reason you don’t get starstruck and do a deal that’s not good for your business.

Prepare for the blip. Any Shark Tank appearance is likely to boost sales by a lot—and immediately. But late notice of an airing by show producers often makes it difficult for companies to have the right inventory levels even if they anticipate a bump. Nyamumbo, for example, was “not [as] ready as I would have loved for us to be from an inventory perspective,” she says.

“We had staged inventory at different warehouses and had a ‘Shark Tank Sampler’ set,” Frisch says. “And we pre-built a new web page, so as soon as our segment started, we highlighted the show and that particular collection, which sold very well. We saw a huge response that night. At one point, we were in the top 100 products that people were searching for on Amazon.”

Cope with success. No matter what else happens, exposure works. Though Long Table didn’t get a deal, for instance, show exposure goosed sales for the pancake and waffle mix company from $90,000 in its best pre-show year to $1.6 million in 2023.

The exposure helped Kahawa 1893 “expand the brand to new channels,” including retailers Meijer and Target. “And our [direct-to-consumer] was a smaller part of the operation but keeps growing because of the traffic we got and keep getting from the airing,” Nyamumbo says.

Remember, it’s television. There is a cutting-room floor for Shark Tank just like for any show, meaning that while many owners’ pitches are taped, not all ultimately air—or some are held for a season. On the other hand, startups can get a secondary sales bump when Shark Tank reruns queue them up again or, better yet, producers do a follow-up segment on a company’s success.

Also, it’s important to be aware of the fine print: The show’s nondisclosure agreement is extensive, meaning that among other things, participants can’t talk externally about communications with producers.

Learn from failures. After the klieg lights are turned off, some nasty things can happen. Sienna Sauce CEO Tyla-Simone Crayton, for example, scored a deal with celebrity shark and accessories queen Kendra Scott, who offered $100,000 for 20% of the company. The parties ended up disagreeing about the value of Sienna Sauce, however, according to the Houston Chronicle, and never consummated the deal, so Crayton had to grow her brand in other ways.

That’s a relatively happy ending compared with what happened to Project Pollo. Founder Lucas Bradbury appeared on Shark Tank in May 2022, seeking $2.5 million for a 5% stake in his plant-based-chicken fast-food chain, but all the sharks resisted what they believed was an excessive valuation.

Turned out, they were right. Project Pollo got an expected big bump in franchising inquiries after the show, but soon the chain got caught in the ongoing downdraft in plant-based meat products. Most of the chain’s restaurants have closed and its brand has been acquired by a national franchise group.

Cherish the long haul. Nature’s Wild Berry has gotten about 100 million views, 10 million likes, and uncountable shares on social media thanks to Greiner’s attention. And the shark redesigned the company’s website right down to the verbiage. “We get face time with her at least every other week and communicate with [Cuban] through email, and he’s so responsive,” Watt says.

The show actually prompted a business model change by Phil Wong, cofounder and CEO of Phil’s Finest, which makes hybrid meat/vegetable products. After show exposure that boosted retail, he says, “people were saying you should partner with this retailer or restaurant” instead of focusing on selling the Phil’s Finest brand in stores, “and that painted a picture for us beyond just [retail sales] in the days and weeks after the airing.”

So Wong made the company a private label supplier to the foodservice industry and has pulled out of retail almost entirely, partly as a result of not consummating the company’s deal with Cuban and Lubetzky for 15% for $300,000.

For companies that stick to retailing their own brand, the Shark Tank fan base is a sticky one, says Frisch, whose company has grown to about $7 million in annual revenues. “It’s a very highly engaged group of people with a high rate of return, higher than our standard customer average,” Frisch says.ft