Max Brown and Brian Brunsing might not have walked away from their "Shark Tank" pitch with funding, but they did gain exposure and insight.
The pair recently pitched their Banana Phone, a Bluetooth-enabled mobile headset shaped like a – you guessed it – a banana. The episode of the business reality show aired on Sept. 30.
The business, which started in 2017, did about $560,000 in gross sales last year and is on track to surpass $1 million this year, according to Brown.
The show's panel of judges — or "Sharks" — main qualm was that the founders weren’t working full time on the business, they said.
“We think the Sharks really slipped up on this one,” Brown said jokingly.
Brown, who grew up in Buffalo and now lives in the Colden area, is president of local family business Garrett Leather. Buffalo native Brunsing moved away for college and now lives in Bend, Oregon, and works full time as a senior director of e-commerce and digital marketplaces at Visa. The Banana Phone’s third co-founder Charlie Katrycz is a Toronto native and co-founder of Undu Wearables, which makes wearable heating packs.
Brown and Brunsing talked with Business First about how they got on Shark Tank and their advice on pitching based on their experience.
Social media and advertising strategy
Shark Tank reached out to the Banana Phone founders directly to come on the show after finding them through social media. The product also got an unpaid and unsolicited review from Reese Witherspoon on Instagram in March after the actress saw a Banana Phone Instagram ad.
It’s safe to say social media has paid off for the startup, which uses the services of Buffalo company, Heartsome Marketing.
- Your social media presence should be like your presence at dinner party. If you show up at a dinner party, only talk about yourself and don’t have back-and-forth interactions with other guests, you probably won’t get a great response. “If you create content and a brand on social media that welcomes collaboration or interaction, friendship and emotion, you’ll be way more successful than using it as a beacon to signal out information about who you are,” Brunsing said.
- Mobilize your personal networks to amplify your signal. In 2017, the business raised over $30,000 through a crowdfunding campaign. The founders had targeted asks for each tier of their personal network, from close family and friends to their expanded networks to their acquaintances. Calls to action included sharing a post, commenting and creating their own social media posts. “It really amplified our launch,” said Brunsing.
- Make sure you’re understanding and using each social media platform correctly. For example, Instagram is for visuals and TikTok is for short videos. “You don’t want to be posting something that doesn’t work with that platform,” said Brown. “It looks inauthentic.”
Pitching on Shark Tank
Presenting can be stressful enough. Then add five millionaires to the audience.
- Practice, practice, practice. The pair did mock interviews with whomever they could, from businesspeople to friends and family. They asked them to throw questions at them to make sure the founders could respond properly. “It helped so we could articulate what we wanted to say really well on the show,” said Brown.
- Define your company, its purpose and its worth. The founders spent a lot of time early on in the Shark Tank journey defining the Banana Phone as a company. What is its target? What creative scenario would it take for the founders to change that target? Whether or not a business is gearing up for a pitch, it’s a good exercise, the pair said. “On the floor, we were incredibly prepared with what our zone of agreement was, what factors we’d negotiate on and what we’d say no and walk away from,” Brunsing said.
