'Shark Tank' judge Mark Cuban praised the 'healthiest tuna available' yet no one invested in it
"Shark Tank" entrepreneurs do come up with innovative products and impress judges with their pitches. But having a good idea doesn't necessarily mean that they could convince sharks to invest. A couple of entrepreneurs pitched a healthy version of tuna, and received a lot of praise from healthy food connoisseur Mark Cuban. However, no one invested in their company due to shocking numbers.
The entrepreneurs Sean Wittenberg and Bryan Boches sought $600,000 for a 3% stake in their company, SafeCatch. Despite providing customers with a healthier version of tuna, SafeCatch was not a food company. It was a tech company since it was all about using technology to pick the healthiest tuna available in the market. The sharks were offered cans of tuna to try, and they all loved it. “You’re just trying to be the healthiest tuna available,” Cuban said.
A lot of seafood has significant levels of mercury in the meat, which is not good for human consumption over time. There have been efforts to sell seafood with a lower level of mercury. However, testing one fish for mercury costs about $100. These entrepreneurs had the tech in place to do that test in a matter of minutes. They brought a giant machine to the show, used for just this purpose, which they claimed could perform 1,000 such tests.
However, it took the company a whopping $14 million to get this technology, with the help of phD physicists and testing labs. At the time, the entrepreneurs claimed to have many investors interested in what was being done. However, the investors got tired, and the company ran out of money. That’s when Wittenberg and Boches came in and bought it out for $900,000.
SafeCatch had sales worth more than a million dollars in a year, but the problem was that they were losing $70,000 a month. In 12 months, the entrepreneurs said that they incurred heavy losses of $530,000. This must have put off a lot of the sharks immediately, but Cuban was still interested in the technology aspect. He asked about it multiple times, but the entrepreneurs kept talking about numbers, which he was not interested in at all.
“You guys got to listen more than you sell,” he said. Ultimately, none of the sharks were interested in placing such a high valuation on a company that was losing so much money. All of the sharks chose not to offer a deal. Maybe Cuban would have offered something had he learned more about the technology side of things, but that did not happen. In the end, the entrepreneurs were left with nothing despite pleading their case as much as possible.
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