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Every year over 40,000 companies go through months of effort trying to get a coveted spot on one of the world’s most popular shows: Shark Tank.
It is a nasty application process that involves paperwork, interviews, and auditions, all to get in front of the sharks and pitch (and most likely get torn to shreds). But it pays — it pays MILLIONS. 207 million dollars have been invested through the show to date.
But it’s easy to tell a success story out of these massive success cases. I’ve been wondering if these guys are actually good at investing. I’ve been wondering: is the ROI there? How many companies do they bash that go on to prove them wrong? Is the Shark’s instinct correct?
So we did it. We’ve spent weeks looking at the cold hard data of thousands of companies that have gone through 295 episodes of Shark Tank. We analyzed everything from their products, to how much money they asked for, to valuations and, of course, outcomes.
We found some shady stuff — like producers trying to get equity just for appearing on the show. We found that half of the deals that were broadcasted on the show never actually close, and we wanted to share that with the world.
