About a year ago, my co-founder Kunal Sarda, WG’11, and I received the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pitch our business to seasoned investors on the popular ABC reality TV show Shark Tank, thanks to an application notification from the Wharton Venture Initiation Program. We knew that if we wanted the Sharks to fund VerbalizeIt, a language translation community that offers users real-time access to human translators, we would have one chance to deliver a succinct pitch and negotiate for seed funding in front of 7 million viewers.
We spent weeks (or, more accurately, months) preparing for our negotiation, and we are pleased to report that our hard work paid off. We generated a bidding war among the Sharks and successfully negotiated a funding offer. The episode aired this past Friday, May 17, but you can watch a recording of Shark Tank Episode 26 on VerbalizeIt’s website.
