Part 2 of 5 in the Shark Tank Chronicles. Read Part 1.
We had five weeks to learn how to pitch on national television. The first full run-through went badly.
Why did our Shark Tank mock pitch go so badly? Tyler Stelter, Neat's COO, and I spoke over each other, couldn't speak clearly to our patent, and lost sight of what makes the brand special. The Neat story is complicated, and our shirt is technical. Our fix was a list of five things we had to say before leaving the Tank.
Only one month til the tank
The show gave us a pitch team to sharpen how we delivered the opening scene, plus help with our display, set and being on national TV. Like never look at the camera.
Tyler and I rehearsed constantly. Then we ran a mock pitch for a few founder friends here in Seattle and an investor.
It did not go well. Like, really bad.
Why the mock pitch went terribly
We were speaking over each other. We couldn't speak to the patent well, and we lost sight of what makes the brand special.
Here's why. The Neat story is actually complicated. It's not like I came up with the idea in my dorm room, took out a credit card to buy inventory, and now we're an eight-figure brand. It's messy. There are patents involved, existing investors, a small acquisition, contractors that function as key members, and tariff issues. Plus we were in the middle of a big product migration. Every answer came with an asterisk or needed way too much context.
We were trying to tell a clean, honest story without confusing anyone, and without taking away from our recent success. In the room, it came out the opposite of clean.
The other problem: the shirt is technical
Neat's shirt is built on real technology. Our head of product knows it cold. He wasn't coming to the Tank. That meant Tyler and I needed what felt like a master's degree in sport performance apparel technology, fast. In other words, we had to get grilled by technical people to stress test whether we could hold our own in the Tank.
What we changed after the mock pitch
That's when we decided to stop getting lost in the sauce and focus on what makes this brand special. I made a list of the five things we needed to get across before we left the Tank. In other words, I wasn't walking off the set until I said these five things, and if we did that, we had a shot.
Next in the Shark Tank Chronicles
In Part 3: Atlanta. Shuttle buses, a green room with Doritos, and a producer who tells us how to celebrate in a hallway.
Neat Apparel makes sweatproof shirts for men. Shop Neat's sweatproof shirts.
