Barbara Corcoran has heard pitches ad nauseam during her seven-season “Shark Tank” tenure. So Yahoo Finance engaged the New York City real estate mogul in a rapid-fire Q&A session—and she dished on the good, the bad, the ugly, and of course, The Donald.
What’s the worst pitch you’ve ever heard?
Without a moment of hesitation, Corcoran tells us that the Ionic Ear—a pitch for a small bluetooth device on the first episode of season one—is still the worst proposal she’s ever heard. “The problem with the pitch was when he was on the set he stared as though he was on drugs the entire time,” Corcoran says. “And when I asked him, ‘OK, how does that work in the ear?,’ he said you had to have it surgically put it in. And when I asked him, ‘Hey, what happens when the battery runs out?,’ he said you have to have it surgically removed. We were all afraid to leave the set on the Sony lot that day because he really looked like he could kill somebody...he was not happy about not getting that investment,” she says.
What percentage of deals that the viewer sees actually materializes?
Corcoran says it depends on the shark and the season. She estimates that she’s closed roughly 55% of the deals that we’ve seen on air. Why do so few make the cut? “What happens on Shark Tank is all of the entrepreneurs are pitching, trying to get money. Very often when you do the due diligence afterwards, you find out the patent...is really owned by the ex-brother-in-law," she says. "Things like that come up—[the] sales [they cite are] really just a sales pitch.”
What percentage of the deals do the sharks actually make money on?
Corcoran said that about one-third of the deals that go through are actually profitable. “Two-thirds of them, of course, go off into the sunset after they have enormous sales on Shark Tank,” she laments.
What’s one company that you wish you could have landed a deal with that you're kind of kicking yourself about?
In season one, Corcoran landed a deal with Notehall, an online marketplace where college students buy and sell class notes. She describes the founders as “two kids from college—one was a dumb kid, he claimed, and one was a smart kid.” She says she had a personal connection with the company because she “always cheated in high school.” Corcoran gave the entrepreneurs $90,000 in exchange for 25% of the company—and that’s as much as the viewers were able to see. After the episode aired, however, the partners actually declined Corcoran’s offer, and Notehall was ultimately acquired by Chegg.com, which specializes in online textbook rentals and online tutoring. Corcoran says, “They swore they wouldn't shop it around, but they did. And they sold it for $10 million two weeks later, and I was out of the picture.”
Shark Tank has had several high-profile guest judges like GoPro CEO Nick Woodman and Ashton Kutcher. Would you welcome Donald Trump as a guest judge?
Corcoran says Trump and “Shark Tank” would be a match made in TV heaven. “We'd love to have him as a guest judge,” she says. “I mean I'm not in charge of the show, the production company is, but it would be a great plus to have Donald on the set. He has a huge ego—everybody on the set has a huge ego—he adores attention. We have a large viewership, and it would bring in a whole group of people that normally wouldn’t watch the show, so it would increase our ratings.”
