From magic pills to jail-worthy ideas: 3 'Shark Tank' pitches that set off Mark Cuban's scam detector
‘Shark Tank’ investor Mark Cuban has a keen eye for catching scams camouflaged as start-up businesses. As soon as a business pitch starts going south, the investor can sense something is fishy. The ‘Shark Tank’ stage features various entrepreneurs, and while some go home with investments, others are faced with rejection. In some cases, the Sharks grill the start-up founders and their supposedly "shady" businesses. In this article, we have listed the top three business pitches that were accused of being fake by Cuban.
1. MinusCal
Two Nashville, Tennessee natives came on stage, pitching their company called MinusCal. The name might suggest that it’s a product that helps people lose weight, but the founders kept creating confusion over their company’s vision. When Cuban admitted that he was suspicious of their claim of reducing calories without proven data backing it, the founders said that they don’t make any such claims. “You can’t claim that it’s going to reduce 100 calories out of what you eat by taking two pills,” Cuban insisted. One of the founders chimed in, saying that they instead claim that their pill can block fat by a certain percentage. This is where things started to go south.
“They just invented this product out of nothing and gave it a name,” Cuban told his fellow Sharks. When the other judges kept asking more questions, Cuban suggested that they would be investing in “air” and nothing more. Although the entrepreneurs kept insisting that they had data backing up their claims, Cuban wasn’t convinced. Eventually, none of the judges invested in the company, and the founders left empty-handed.
2. Tycoon
This entrepreneur came on ‘Shark Tank’ with a real estate idea. Tycoon is a crowd investing platform that allows everyday people to invest in real estate “for as little as $1000.” Cuban immediately disliked his idea and announced his verdict. “I hate it. I’m out,” he said. “I smell jail time,” Kevin O’Leary hilariously interjected. Cuban argued that crowdfunding models allow people to invest their first or last $1000, but the company providing that loses liquidity. The founder claimed that the company has a lead investor, but his anonymity bothered judge Barbara Corcoran. “Too spooky and unfair to someone who isn’t well informed in the real estate business,” she added. Lori Griener also found the business unreliable. The founder ended up walking out without a deal.
3. Pavlok
Manish Sethi from Boston, Massachusetts, came on the ‘Shark Tank’ stage to pitch his start-up company, Pavlok. He claimed that his wristband product uses aversion therapy to help people get rid of their bad habits. Cuban argued that aversion therapy is an already discovered, tried, and tested theory that he can’t claim to be his own. “What percent of the time does it not work?” the investor asked. “It doesn’t work if you don’t want it to work,” the entrepreneur claimed, which left the investor stunned. “You are such a con artist,” Cuban said. Griener agreed that the product lacks clinical trials. O’Leary did offer, but he refused to have him on board as an investor. Sethi had pissed off everyone at this point and had to leave without a deal.