Monica Selby
Everywhere Else Tennessee is coming up fast! 26 days and counting…
We already have an awesome speaker line up, and after tonight, we can add “TV star” to the list.
Speaker Josh Hix and his cofounder Nick Taranto will pitch their company Plated on ABC’s Shark Tank tonight at 9 PM EST. Go ahead and get ready for all the “will they bite?” comments.
Plated is a gourmet food delivery startup that graduated from Techstars New York last year. The company delivers fresh ingredients for chef-designed meals right to your door. They cover 80% of the US, sourcing local ingredients in each city. You can sign up for a subscription and get a slight discount on each meal shipped, or you can order whenever you want to.
And the meals are truly gourmet, too. Currently, in Nashville, you can order Lemongrass Pork with Vermicelli Noodles, Coffee-Rubbed Steak With Roasted Pepper Panzanella, or Poached Salmon with Red Quinoa, Kale, and Dill Yogurt Sauce.
The ingredients come ready to cook, with spices already measured out and everything.
In January, Plated announced a $5 million Series A led by ffVentures.
So, will the sharks “bite”? (See what I did there?)
With the graduation from Techstars and the recent series A, Plated is obviously a company to watch. Hix and Taranto are Harvard MBA graduates, and with such rapid expansion, they’re doing something right.
But, Shark Tank investors rarely go for typical startups. The sharks seem more interested in what we would consider “lifestyle” businesses. Of course, the show was filmed last year, before the Series A was announced. Plated could’ve looked like a different company at that point.
Regardless of how they walk away from the shark tank, Plated will almost certainly get the same boost in traffic other Shark Tank companies see during their episode.
And, hey, they raised $5 million.
After you watch Josh on TV, make sure you see him speak at Everywhere Else Tennessee, where he’ll talk about the number one thing every entrepreneur must have.
