- Hi, everyone, I'm Emily Canal.
I'm Ink Magazine's resident Shark Tank expert,
and this is Tips from the Tank.
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Eric Roy presented his company, Hydroviv,
which is a line of custom-built filters
for purifying water from your tap,
and he went on Shark Tank, seeking $400,000
for 10% of his business, which he was inspired to do
after the Flint, Michigan, water crisis.
Eric did a great job.
He had a really simple demonstration
that just focused on lead and arsenic
and getting that out of the water,
which we all know is very, very bad for humans to drink.
And he had a small presentation.
Handed out his filters.
He didn't get lost in the science of it
and just gave them everything that they needed
and then they could move on to the business plan.
There were two main issues with Eric's pitch
that the sharks had a lot of problems with.
One of them was the marketing.
- I need help, sales, and marketing.
- A management-level marketing person
is just gonna wanna spend money in new ways
to prove their value.
- Right now, we don't have anyone at our company
who wakes up, thinking about the marketing analytics.
- How about you? - You do.
- [Eric] What the data are. - You do.
- That's your job, you're the head.
- And it should be him, you know.
He may be a small operation at the moment,
but he's the founder, and he should be pushing those things,
especially since he's the person
who knows so much about this problem
and how his business can fix it.
Guest shark, Rohan Oza, had a lot of problems with this.
He was concerned that people didn't really know
about the problem of their drinking water.
Yes, we are aware of Flint, Michigan,
but that seems so siloed compared to the rest of the country
and how was Eric going to get that word out to people
that one, there was a problem,
and two, he has a simple fix for it?
So a couple of sharks went out because of that.
They really liked his idea.
They really liked him, but they saw a lot of problems
in how he wanted to scale the business
and market it to consumers.
- So, I'm interested, because I love products
that do well by doing good.
- Thanks. - So I'll make you an offer.
I'm gonna offer you the $400,000, but I want 20%.
- Another one of the problems with Eric's pitch
was he's passionate, and that's really great
when you're going to investors
and you're pitching your business,
but he got a little too tied up
with the criticisms he was getting from the sharks.
So Barbara expressed a lot of concern in the customer base,
and Barbara's saying she's out.
And he keeps focusing on answering Barbara's question
about the customers.
- There's a couple things I do wanna speak to Barbara.
- She's not-- - But I'm out.
- No, no, no.
- And you can just see Mark Cuban getting so frustrated
that he's ignoring him.
Mark Cuban has a really big ego,
and he doesn't want people to wait on a deal offer.
Thankfully, he ended up re-focusing to Mark
and was able to salvage that deal,
but he really lost an opportunity to negotiate with Mark.
He could have maybe gone down to 15%,
which is closer to his original ask of 10.
- You have a deal, Mark.
- Ah, at last.
- The three main takeaways from this episode are,
one, if you're targeting an investor,
make sure you're doing it right.
We say this over and over and over again on the show.
Do your homework.
If you watch the show, you know that Mark Cuban
doesn't like it when you entertain other deal offers.
He'll often go out.
He has a big ego, and he wants you to cater to that,
so if you really wanna do work with a shark
like Mark Cuban, you need to know how to respond
to his deal offers.
The second takeaway is don't get distracted.
Lori was saying, you haven't heard from Kevin yet.
You haven't heard from Kevin yet.
Meanwhile, Mark is saying, hey wait a second,
I offered you a deal.
Why are you talking to Barbara when she said she was out?
In the end, that robbed him of time to negotiate with Mark.
The third takeaway is, if you're going to sell
a solution to a problem,
make sure you paint a very clear picture of the problem.
When Eric presented his business,
a couple of the sharks asked about,
okay, is this a massive problem for people?
How many people are actually aware of this problem?
We know about Flint, but is this a problem outside of Flint?
And that ended up being one of the issues
for Eric and his business
was that the sharks couldn't see
how he was going to educate people.
Eric had a really strong product
and a really, really strong pitch.
He was calm, he was composed.
He had really great visuals.
I think if he could have just honed those three takeaways,
then he would have walked out with a better deal
than the one he got.
I'm Emily Canal.
That was Tips from the Tank,
and remember, if you're selling a solution,
make sure you clearly present the problem.
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