Since the airing of our episode of Dragons’ Den last October where we had a fantastic result (view the episode here, or read about How we did it here) we’ve had some pretty great things happen for us. Below I’ll elaborate on what happened to the deal with the Dragons’. But by far the coolest piece of news we have to share is that on one very important fan engagement metric – player to fan interaction – we are outperforming Twitter.
This season, more fans have received messages from players on @shnarped than on twitter. #CBCDragonsDen — Jim Treliving (@JTreliving) April 3, 2014
We aren’t going to pretend we have anywhere near the stature of Twitter yet, but the rampant adoption of Shnarped by NHL prospects at the CHL, NCAA, and AHL level is a sign of good things to come in hockey. This article published today by the Canadian Press exacerbates this fact with some notable quotes.
“I think (Sproat and Hagel) have struck some gold with (Shnarped),” – Vancouver Canucks defenceman Ryan Stanton “I think almost half our team is on it, now we’re trying to get the other half” – Henrik Samuelsson, Edmonton Oil King and Coyotes’ 1st round draft pick “Being part of the Canadian Hockey League, I have friends that play in the Ontario League and the Quebec League. It’s neat seeing their personal little achievements and how their team is doing, because we are all connected in the sense that we are part of the Canadian Hockey League. We’re kids, too. We love our technology.” – Curtis Lazar, Edmonton Oil King Senators 1st round draft pick
Last night a follow-up episode of Dragons’ Den aired which featured myself flying out to LA and taking a serious grilling from Mark Cuban on the set of Shark Tank. Mark didn’t bite, but once again getting our name out to 1 million Canadians has only added to the list of positives we’ve seen since the first episode aired back in October. Some of our major achievements, in addition to the major one mentioned by Mr. Treliving above, include:
- Raised $700,000 on terms much better than were offered by the Dragons
- Closed a deal with Jim Treliving
- 140 NHL players and 1,000 NHL prospects are now on our platform including TJ Oshie, Jonathan Toews, Brendan Gallagher, and Matt Moulson
- #1 sports app in Canada for two weeks in November
- Interactions on Shnarped are up over 500% since the October 30th episode aired
- One very major NCAA program has agreed to support Shnarped in college football should we make the jump
We’ll admit we have a lot to still figure out, but right now we are very optimistic about our future. But what happened to that awesome deal from the Dragons’??? I get asked this all the time. On the show they offer us $250,000 for one-third of our company. This is just for TV; the real negotiations and due diligence happen after the filming and either the entrepreneurs or the Dragons can walk away at any moment. The Dragons want to put milestones in place to see progress before they’ll invest. The entrepreneurs want to increase their valuation, especially once they’ve accomplished some of these milestones. At the end of the day there was no way we were going to give up that amount of our company at that valuation, and the Dragons’ themselves probably wouldn’t have invested at even that low a valuation. They’re used to getting whatever they want, and often rightfully so. With some businesses having the influence of someone like Arlene Dickinson can be a make-or-break factor in the company’s success. So we didn’t close the deal with the five Dragons.
That deal aside, separately we negotiated a deal with Jim Treliving and are very proud to have him on board as an advisor and investor. Jim is as connected in the hockey (and restaurant!) world as anyone, but more importantly he is the type of great human being that any person or business would be very fortunate to be associated with. His support and guidance have been instrumental to the significant progress we’ve made over the past few months.
After the airing of the show, we raised almost three times as much investment from outside investors and only had to give up half as much equity as we would have from the Dragons’. That is, we raised $700,000 and only had to give up about 15% of our company, as opposed to getting $250K by giving up 33% to the Dragons’. The airing of the show is what matters to entrepreneurs, not the closing of the deal.
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