Celebrating Shark Tank products by moms and for moms

Today we want to highlight some Shark Tank products created by moms for moms. These aren't just things that might make a nice gift, they're companies that run on mom (or grandma!) power. You won't find any kitchen tools or baby care products here either; no chores allowed! These are presents for fun and for grown-ups.

NailPak 
NailPak by Duality Cosmetics is the most portable manicure solution and a touching story. A mother's bonding ritual with her daughters turned commercial success, NailPak came from their evenings together spent doing each others' nails. They came up with NailPak, a self-contained package that combines nail polish and polish remover along with pads and a file.

Send-A-Ball 
If you want to shake things up in your greeting card practices, why not deliver those happy sentiments on a bouncy ball instead? The medium is the message, after all. Send-A-Ball will literally send a bouncy ball in the mail on your behalf to any recipient you designate. Your greetings will be all the more happily received this way! Send-A-Ball is run by two sisters who live across the street from each other, and wanted to have a business that would give them the freedom and flexibility to spend time with their families.

Hold Your Haunches 
Hold Your Haunches is not your typical shapewear. It's not made to hide underneath your clothes, it's shapewear built into the clothes. Hold Your Haunches pants tighten legs and booties and are also just nice to look at! The secret to Hold Your Haunches is in the unique two-layer design, which is design and utility patent-pending. These shapewear fashion pants have an attractive outer shell and an inner compression shell sewn in at the waist.

Ice Chips Candy 
Ice Chips are sugar-free hard candy sweetened with Xylitol and smashed to bits into its distinctive "ice chips" shape. The business is run by two enterprising friends, Bev Vines-Haines and Charlotte Clary, who over their years of friendship have worked on a tons of ideas and projects until finally coming across Ice Chips. These two grandmothers have 37 grandchildren between them and wanted to make a candy that was healthy yet tasted good enough that their brood would like it too.

Introducing the visualizations gallery

Sharkalytics now has a visualizations gallery made using data from Shark Tank. It's a big step up from just publishing charts on this blog like we used to. By design, these new visualizations update continuously with each episode added to the site. They also feature richer content that you can explore rather that passively consume.

The first chart added to the gallery illustrates every Shark Tank deal according to its asking valuation in relation to the deal valuation ultimately received. Visit the site to view the full version.

Shark Tank valuations: asking vs. deal


Our newest chart represents all the group deals done on Shark Tank in a heatmap style, according by which investors participated. Visit the site to view the full version.

Shark Tank group deals

To learn more about these visualizations or inquire about putting together one of your own, just visit the gallery and enjoy!

Are Shark Tank deals getting larger with each passing season, or does it just seem that way?

Are Shark Tank deals getting larger? |Create infographics

Last week's episode featured the largest deal in Shark Tank history: Kevin O'Leary's $2.5 million investment in Zipz, a maker of single-serve wines. Zipz aside, it feels like the sharks have really opened up their wallets this season, so we did a little research to confirm that notion. Season 6 so far has seen $9,570,000 invested in 11 episodes^[1], which already puts it ahead of season 4, which saw $9,484,000 invested in its entire 26 episodes. Season 6 investments are also 59% of the way to the season 5 total investment, which reached $16,207,500 over 29 episodes.

Seasons 1 through 3 had smaller investment totals, partly because they were shorter runs, though that is far from the whole story. In fact, there's no denying that the deals have been growing larger in recent seasons. Our analysis shows the average deal size rising with each passing season since the low of $159,286 in season 3, reaching $182,385 in season 4, $265,697 in season 5, and $398,750 in season 6 (so far). This appears to be largely the effect of "megadeals", which skew the average upwards. For example, consider deals worth $1 million or more. Seasons 1 and 3 had no such deals, seasons 2 and 4 each had one, and seasons 5 and 6 have had three million-dollar-plus deals each.

The median deal size actually has been pretty consistent across most seasons, at either $100,000 or $150,000. Although the show has attracted some noticeably large (and already well-funded) companies as its audience has grown, the majority of deals continue to be for smaller enterprises that don't get a million-dollar valuation, let alone an investment of that size. In the case of season 6, the median deal size is tracking at $200,000, but with only 11 episodes so far, it remains to be seen whether that momentum will be sustained.

Notes:
^[1]We count the double-feature premiere episode of season 6 as two episodes.
* Clarification: We consider the episode featuring Fridge Fronts, Lightfilm, THINgloss and Clip'n'Go to be part of season 2, which is the season it aired in despite being produced for season 1. Fridge Fronts and Light Film each snagged a $100,000 investment in that episode.

10 things learned while building sharkalytics (part II)

10 things learned building sharkalytics (part II) |Create infographics

#5 In Shark Tank history, there have been three no-deal episodes
You might think it'd be a downer to watch a no-deal episode, and it can be, so it was surprising to find three such episodes^[1], one in each of seasons 3 through 5. It wasn't always that the pitches themselves fell flat, sometimes the entrepreneurs and the sharks just couldn't reach an agreement at the end.

• Season 3 Episode 11: Blondie's Cookies, Copa Di Vino^[2], The Sullivan Generator, and ViewSport.
• Season 4 Episode 17: Addison's Wonderland, Hip Chix, Muddy Water Camo, and Proof Eyewear.
• Season 5 Episode 9: DoorBot, Magical Moments, Slawsa, and Surprise Ride.

#4 On the flip side, there hasn't been a single episode where all companies struck a deal

In our last post, we remarked on how 49% of Shark Tank pitches result in a deal^[3]. Turns out that's also the tendency for individual episodes, not just the series collectively. The vast majority of episodes (59 out of 97, or 60.8%) are structured to feature four pitches, two of which land a deal. The next most common format is four pitches with three deals, which has happened on 16 episodes. Curiously, the chart below indicates that there have been a few incidences of episodes with 40% pitch success rates. These occurrences are the result of early episodes in season 1 which sometimes featured five, rather than four, companies.

There's also the odd instance of a 67% success rate episode, which happens to be the one time that there were only three companies pitching. Fans of the show probably remember that episode (season 4 episode 8) as the PlateTopper episode, the most drawn-out pitch in the show's history. According to post-show interviews, such as this one with Mark Cuban^[4], it took two and a half hours to film the pitch. PlateTopper did eventually strike a deal with Lori Greiner, but it ultimately fell through after taping.^[5]

#3 The largest investment made on Shark Tank was...
A $2 million investment in Ten-Thirty One Productions, a company that creates, owns, and produces live attractions in the horror genre. The next two largest deals are not far behind: $1.75 million for Rugged Maniac, an obstacle course event series on a national scale, and $1.25 million for Hy-Conn^[6], which supplies super-fast connectors for fire hydrants and garden hoses. You might think these would have been group deals, given their size, but you'd be wrong. See point #2.

#2 The sole investor in each of Shark Tank's three largest deals was Mark Cuban
Cuban was the sole shark investing in Ten Thirty One Productions, Rugged Maniac, and Hy-Conn. Adding up to $5 million altogether, these three deals account for 36.5% of the $13.7 million that he has invested on the show.^[7]

#1 Nearly a third of all deals are group deals
Out of the 194 deals we've catalogued, 64 of them, or 31.9%, are group deals. Is that more collaboration than you expected to see from such a competitive set of individuals? What's even more surprising is who collaborates most often: Kevin O'Leary, who has shared 21 of his 30 deals, 70.0%, with another shark. That lucky shark happens to be Robert Herjavec 61.9% of the time. Maybe their past experience working together has something to do with it. Both investors were on the panel of the Canadian predecessor to Shark Tank, called Dragon's Den.

Actually, the shark that has gone into the largest amount of group deals is Mark Cuban, who has 29 group deals, but he also has more total deals than any other shark. His group deals account for just 49.2% of his total 59 deals, which is still nothing to sneeze at.

By comparison, Barbara Corcoran and Lori Greiner are, let's call it "less collaboratively inclined". They each have just 18 group deals to their name, which represents 43% (Barbara) and 44% (Lori) of their total deals. Although they have a somewhat lower ratio of group deals than the other sharks, they're not far off from Daymond's 23 group deals (51% of total), and he's been on the show longer than either one of them, so as time goes on we'd expect their stats to catch up with the group.^[8]

Footnotes:
^[1] In case you don't believe us, here are episode recaps for each of the three deal-less episodes highlighted here:

• Season 3 Episode 11 (abc.go.com)
• Season 4 Episode 17 (abc.go.com)
• Season 5 Episode 9 (cartermatt.com)

^[2] Bonus fun fact: This was Copa di Vino's second appearance on Shark Tank, the first was in season 2. Needless to say, the company did not reach a deal on either attempt.
^[3] This stat and all others as of season 6 episode 4. As a reminder, deal stats are based on deals struck on air, disregarding whether they were completed after the due diligence process. Where noteworthy, as with Hy-Conn and PlateTopper (both mentioned in this post), we'll call it out for the benefit of our readers.
^[4] Mark Cuban Reveals The Best And Worst 'Shark Tank' Pitches And More, businessinsider.com
^[5] Lori Greiner on a Reddit AMA, reddit.com ^[6] Ten Lessons I Learned from Shark Tank, techcrunch.com
^[7] Although the Hy-Conn deal is known to have fallen through, we don't exclude it from this calculation because we wouldn't know how many of the other investments also failed to close, and hence should be excluded too. As such this number is only a representation of what deals were seen to close on TV, without prejudice as to what may have happened after taping.
^[8] Daymond has appeared in 82 episodes, while Barbara has appeared on 68 episodes and Lori has been on just 44 so far.

10 things I learned while building sharkalytics (part I)

10 things learned building sharkalytics (part I) |Create infographics

#10 About half of companies on Shark Tank get an investment
Of the 391 pitches catalogued on Sharkalytics^[1], 192 of them have reached a deal^[2]. That's a 49% success rate, and it's been roughly the same over each season of Shark Tank. The show's rigorous auditions and vetting process no doubt has something to do with that. If you're an aspiring Shark Tank entrepreneur, getting on the show itself is harder than scoring a deal once you're on it.

#9 Individually, each shark's investment rate is much lower than 49%
As mentioned in an earlier post, Lori has the highest investment rate of any shark. She buys into 23% of the pitches she's heard.^[3] Some sharks' investment rates trail far behind, but no matter: it only takes one to get a deal. Among the five of them, they still manage to invest in about half of the pitches they hear.

#8 The Sharks have invested more than $40 million during the show's run
The 192 deals recorded on Sharkalytics add up to $40,581,500 invested in total, averaging out to $211,361 per deal. As a reminder, it's been reported that a number of the deals that air on the show ultimately fall through. Sharkalytics does not currently publish these statistics, but I welcome and encourage contributions to the database. If you have information on the status of a deal, please sign up to receive an invite to start a user account.

#7 On average, entrepreneurs get more money than they sought
Across all the deals struck on the air, on average the sharks tend to invest $28,111 more than the entrepreneurs sought. The downside is that entrepreneurs also tend to give up much more equity than they initially meant to. They give up 35% equity on average, 17 percentage points more than what they initially pitched.

#6 18.4% deals have "special terms" of some kind
72 of the 391 Shark Tank deals have included "special terms", including contingencies, lines of credit, and all sorts of other fun stuff that will be the subject of future posts. Barbara Corcoran is responsible for a couple of my favorite creative deal terms. A popular one was her stipulation that an entrepreneur lose 30 pounds using his own product before she would invest the $50,000 that he was asking for. He succeeded and she lost her $50,000 when the investment went south^[4]. Another creative Barbara deal was the Broccoli Wad, in which she demanded its name be changed to the Vinny Wad and for Vinny Pastore to become the face of the product.

Stay tuned for part II, with things learned #1-5.

^[1] All stats are as of the airing of season 6 episode 3.

^[2] Deals may or may not close after taping. Sharkalytics currently tracks just which deals close on air.

^[3] Excluding sharks with more limited runs on the show. John Paul DeJoria and Steve Tisch, both guest sharks for one episode in season 5, each invested in one of the four pitches they heard. Jeff Foxworthy also invested in 25% of the eight pitches he heard during his two-episode stint in season 2. 

[4] http://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/225045

Welcome to the Sharkalytics blog

Sharkalytics is a structured database covering ABC's Shark Tank. Unlike more traditional show recaps, blogs, or wikis, Sharkalytics stores the numbers in organized tables that we can query and analyze.

Did you know that Mark Cuban has invested over $13 million on-air during his run on the show?^[1] That's more than the next two most spendy sharks combined, Robert and Daymond, who've put in over $5 million each. Did you know that Lori Greiner is the shark most likely to bite? She has invested in 23% of the pitches she's heard.^[2]

Of course, to run any kind of analysis, you need a high-quality dataset. That's why we painstakingly sourced the information on every pitch, every deal, every company ever on Shark Tank. Much of the information comes first-hand from re-watching episodes of the show, in order to be certain that we had the deal terms right. 

Sharkalytics is a wiki-style database. We encourage the community of Shark Tank fans to contribute their knowledge about companies, deal terms, and outcomes. At this time, editing functionality is limited, but we hope to gradually enhance it. In the meantime, you can sign up for a user account and follow @sharkalytics on Twitter.

Our goal for the blog is to communicate updates and improvements to Sharkalytics, showcase interesting things learned along the way, and provide a forum for discussion. We'll start with a post on 10 unexpected things we found out while gathering the data, so stay tuned for that.

^[1] All stats are as of the time of writing, after season 6 episode 3. Invested amount based on deals struck on-air, regardless of the outcome in the due-diligence process. 

^[2] Excluding sharks with more limited runs on the show. John Paul DeJoria and Steve Tisch, both guest sharks for one episode in season 5, each invested in one of the four pitches they heard. Jeff Foxworthy also invested in 25% of the eight pitches he heard during his two-episode stint in season 2.