Shark Tank is an American business reality television series on ABC that premiered on August 9, 2009. The show is the American franchise of the international format Dragons’ Den, which originated in Japan as Tigers of Money in 2001.
The show featured a panel of multimillionaire investors called “Sharks” who listened to entrepreneurs’ pitch businesses or products they wish to develop. If one or more Sharks were interested, investment deals could be made on the show. However, if all sharks declined, contestants were usually left with nothing. For now, local versions of the show have produced in nine countries such as Australia, Germany, México, Brazil, Colombia, Israel, Portugal, Hungary and Saudi Arabia. Most of the countries have aired more than one season.
Shark Tank was produced in the United States and has been played on-air for 11 seasons. It won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Structured Reality Programme for four consecutive times (2014–2017). Prior to that (2012–13), it won Outstanding Reality Programme.
Not only Shark Tank allows entrepreneurs to seek investments, it also enables them to showcase their products to the world. Whether they reach an agreement or not, it is still beneficial to the entrepreneurs.
Shark Tank just wrapped up its 11th season on 15 May 2020. Altogether, it features 246 episodes, 941 pitches, 559 deals, $157.1 million worth of invested capital, and nearly $1.1 B in company valuations.
Who are the Top 5 Shark Tank in terms of the highest amount raised?
It clearly shows that among 559 confirmed deals company, 38% of the companies have deal valuations more than the company’s sales while 62% are not. Health/ Wellness, Business Services and Automotive are the top 3 industry which has more valuation.
It is worth noting that most of the companies that participated in Shark Tank have increased their sales by 10 or 20 times from the previous year. Many entrepreneurs in the United States have registered to participate in this programme, but only those fulfil the requirement and are selected can participate. Among the companies, only 60% of the companies deal with the Sharks. Below is the summary of Shark Tank confirmed deal by industry.
According to the table, its show that the Sharks are more inclined to invest in entrepreneurs who are involved in food and beverage, lifestyle/home and fashion/beauty. The Sharks had given the offer to 115 companies in food and beverage, 103 companies in lifestyle/home and 91 companies in fashion/beauty. More than half of the deals are from these three industries.
Most of the audience said Shark Tank taught them about negotiation and gave them an idea on which industry has more investment value to the Sharks and which industry does not. The audience can understand where they can make money from the Shark’s point of view, and from the show, the audience will have a clearer mindset and understand how to conduct business with the right thinking.
As an audience or entrepreneur, what can you learn from Shark Tank?
Negotiation skills – Negotiation is the most basic skill for an entrepreneur as investors will never waste their time to listen or teach you how to introduce and develop your products, although your products have the potential.
Understand your investor – When you have a good negotiation, the next thing you must do is to know your investors. This is very important when you pitch your products to any investor. When you know the investor’s background, you will have a more specific idea on their area of interest, the kinds of questions they will ask and suite your answer to them. When you have a good understanding of your investors, you will know what type of points they will interest and focus on. Then, you will be able to introduce your products according to their taste and increase your deal percentage. Not only that, if unfortunately, you do not get a deal, he/she will also be the best source to give you advice for improvement.
Learning from the best – As long as you learn something from your investors, success or failure is irrelevant. This is what Shark Tank had taught their audience. Listening and learning are very important. It would help if you listen to the comments from your investor on what you missed out and learn what you can do so that you could have a better chance next time. You also have to know the mistakes of other entrepreneurs to prevent from making the same mistakes.
Written by Ee Chern Ting, Intern at 27 Advisory.
Having more than 27 years in business, 27 Group is able to provide you with access to investors for competitive funding needs while providing better ways to operate your business through financial and corporate advisory. We are the only 100% Malaysian owned local consulting firm that is fast, flexible and focused with unique expertise that blends of local socio-economic policy setting, engineering-built assets globally and detailed in financial analysis.
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