THE FOLLOWING IS A ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE VIDEO ABOVE
The second entrepreneur into the Shark Tank this week was presenting his business See Rescue and was seeking $200k in exchange for 20% of the business. He has developed a portable streamer that can be extended in emergency situations so that you can increase your visibility for rescue.
As for his numbers, it gets a bit interesting. He licensed out the product years ago and the licensing group saw $15Mill dollars in sales over 15 years. Now the license has expired and he has taken it back. Even without the financial backing of the licensing group, he saw $200k in sales last year and $250k this year. The smaller version sells for $78 and the large one sells for $118.
First of all, I was really disappointed in the Sharks’ hesitation to get involved with this product. I understand their reasoning, but this is a proven product. Since it’s creation it’s saved 4 people’s lives. And that might not sound like a lot, considering it’s over the course of almost two decades, but I’d argue that it would be thoroughly proven if it had only saved a single person’s life. I can’t even imagine the feelings this entrepreneur had when one of those people personally thanked him for saving his life.
Anyway, like I said, I understand their reasoning. The biggest problem they had was with the challenges that would be presented with a strategy that targets a consumer market. The enterpreneur didn’t get into this too deep, but I feel like the only reason they Sharks would be so concerned about this is because much of the 15 years of licensing was focused on military contracts. The entrepreneur didn’t explicitly say that was the case, but he did mention that they had done military contracts in the past. Perhaps there is some clarification on how much of their business was done on those contracts that got edited out for time.
Other than just straight retail, the entrepreneur was also hoping for a path toward a mandate to include this product on lifejackets and in emergency kits. Personally, I think that should definitely be a major focus for his business. Mark is right though. That’s such a binary path. You either succeed and make millions, or you fail and make nothing. So although I think that’s the right path for him to go down, it’s not a path that excites investors. It’s far too risky.
All this being said, I think this product is amazing. It literally saves lives and has been proven to work. The military approves of it and I entirely agree that it needs to be included on all lifejackets and emergency survival kits. So good luck to this entrepreneur. He needs to keep pushing this out as far and wide as he can so more and more people can benefit from it.
Anyway guys, that you so much for watching! Please, please, please comment down below. I would love to see your thoughts on See Rescue. Don’t forget to like, favorite, subscribe, all that jazz. But until next time, I love you guys and I’ll talk to you later! Bye!