Swimply
Holy shit did this guy talk fast. He spoke so fast, it was a god damned relief when the sharks finally kicked his ass out of the tank. Just saying that right up front because, it sucks even having to write this summary since now the deal pitch has to be remembered and that is... not fun!
Anyway...
This dude from New Jersey says that global warming is raising the average temperatures and he has a solution... no, not for global warming! For the temperatures! He's invented "pool sharing", where people who own pools can rent them out to the hot and unwashed for a reasonable fee. And it's all done through an app, of course.
This fast talking son of a bitch was inspired to create the business after seeing a neighbor first build then under utilize their own pool. When he asked if he could use it, she asked if he could toss in a few sheckles to defray the cost and, before anyone knew it, the whole neighborhood was paying to use it.
Originally, Swimply was just a small website. The entrepreneur then used Google Earth to find eighty possible rental pools in his area. Seventy-six said no but four agreed to join and, on that, Swimply raised $30,000 in angel investment. Since then, Swimply has rented 900 hours of pool time and managed to raised another $960,000 on a $6,000,000 value, mostly from a pool maitenance company, to launch a 100 pool beta.
Thus far, in the year in which this deal was recorded, Swimply has booked 1,600 hours of pool time. But the service does not set the price, instead, Swimply acts as a marketplace where pool owners can list their pools and wannabe swimmers can find them.[1] And Swimply double-dips, if you will. It takes a 15% service fee from the host and a 10% service fee from the swimmers. In the same year, Swimply has booked $215,000 in gross sales and booked aproximately $42,000 in profit.
When questioned by Barbara about returning customers and revenues, the entrepreneur states that last year pools were booked at an average of $45 per hour while this year they've risen to $90 and hour. Additionally, a customer in the previous year booked an average of seven time but, this year, has risen to an average of twelve.
Robert starts off, right away, stating that he's impressed Swimply has been able to get investors on so little revenue. Lori states that the entrepreneur might be onto something with all of the empty pools around but isn't sure it's something that she wants to invest in. Barbara thinks the entrepreneur and, like your Stats Shark, doesn't like how fast he talks.
Mark openly laughs at how fast the entrepreneur rattles off words but still sees some value in the idea. His issue is whether people will continue to use it. And Kevin, as is his wont, takes issue with the $6,000,000 valuation that the company has been given.
But that shouldn't be a concern since the entrepreneur projects breaking even in the next year, then grossing $15,000,000 in profits the following year and finally grossing as much as $289,000,000 by 2022! To which Mark thinks a little self-awareness is an important thing, as is not lying to one's self and points out that potential and reality are, like, two different things, man.
The entrepreneur keeps rattling off more projections that get faster and less intelligible and, fuck it, he doesn't get a deal. Why dance around it. And it mostly seems to be because his numbers were made up and he was annoying to listen to. The way he spoke took "active listening" on the part of the audience to a whole new low.
Notes
- ↑ If this sounds familiar, it's because this is often the trend in online services. Just this season, we have seen this with BabyQuip. These services often suffer from what's known as the "Two Market Problem."