Shark Tank’s Daymond John Invests Time & Money In Chicago Startup Resultly

It’s gotta be exciting for Resultly founder Ilya Beyrak who just two months ago penned a blog post on the companies blog about what “I’m Out” means on the hit reality series Shark Tank. Now, Beyrak and the team at Resultly are celebrating bringing Fubu Founder and Shark Tank Shark, Daymond John on board as an investor.

More importantly though, John is excited about the product and part of his investment is a partnership where he will help the team grow their product that allows people to search for something and then get updated on it.

“Kim Kardashian sent a tweet last year stating how she keeps checking eBay for a pair of shoes everyday that’s sold out,” Beyrak said, . “If even Kim can’t find a pair of shoes and keeps repeatedly checking online, imagine how many others suffer the same fate,”

Resultly provides users with a mobile app to stay on top of all their interests. Tapping into the web’s largest ecommerce, travel, news, and social sites lets Resultly bring users items exactly matching their interest the second they hit the web. Resultly aims to eliminate the need for users to continue checking the Internet for updates on the things they care most about.

“When I first tried Resultly, I was blown away by the product in the first couple seconds of playing with it. It easily solves one of the biggest problems with search in a way that all of the big competitors aren’t addressing,” said John. “It was hard not to get excited about the product and additional value that I could bring.” Resultly realized there was a real world problem of users repeating search behavior online to get the freshest content: the need for constantly checking if something has been added or updated online. Thru its service, once a specific interest is added to a users’ account, Resultly stays on the lookout for things matching that interest automatically. Users then receive detailed alerts to their mobile device with the key information around those items. Products receive key information like images, price, color, and condition, while Job alerts show salary, location, and position.

John invested in Resultly throgh his “shark branding” investment arm. Sharkbranding scours the country to find interesting startups and companies that would compliment John’s current portfolio of companies or that would make great partners. We met SharkBranding’s, Jared Nixon, at the GigTank Investor Day in Chattanooga Tennessee last August.

Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban leads $1 million dollar round for Florida startup.

Madison Startup Entrepreneurs Wow’d By St. Louis Venture Draft Event

You may not think about it every Sunday, Monday night and Thursday night that you’re watching your favorite NFL football team but an alarming number of pro athletes actually go bankrupt after their professional careers end. In talking with a few celebrities who have almost gone down that route, it’s not even ignorance that some may think. It’s not living beyond your means as a national celebrity, sometimes pro athletes and celebrities really get too busy to manage their money. They also get too busy to think about what happens afterwards.

We’ve all heard the sad stories too, of people like Fantasia Barrino and other stars who have turned their finances over to someone less than qualified to handle such large amounts of money. Celebrities and pro athletes assume that everyone has their best interest at heart.

Well former NFL star and entrepreneur Brandon Williams does. Williams, through his Brandon Williams Economic Development Corporation is trying to connect athletes and celebrities with entrepreneurism. He’s not talking about the kind where a celebrity quickly endorses a product and moves on. Williams is trying to connect entrepreneurs, startups, sports stars and celebrities in a new kind of ecosystem so that entrepreneurs can benefit from investment and athletes and celebrities have a plan for when their careers slow.

One of Williams initiatives is Venture Draft, a startup and entrepreneur event, pitch contest and showcase that happened in St. Louis this past weekend.

ABC Shark Tank Shark, Founder of Fubu and partner in Shark Branding, Daymond John, was one of the top level keynote speakers at the event. We didn’t raise enough money in our last crowdfunding leg to attend ourselves, but our good friend Scott Resnick in Madison WI led a group of 6 from Madison to St. Louis for the event.

Resnick was “Wowed” by the event and wrote a great entry on his blog where he said:

The first annual Venture Draft Conference was held in St Louis this weekend. The mission of the conference was to bring professional athletes, venture capitalists and technology experts face-to-face to create business opportunities (aka allow entrepreneurs to mingle with and teach current and former NFL players about technology). A tip of the hat to the Brandon Williams Economic Development Corporation: the Venture Draft was a success.

Rarely do I experience a “wow” moment at a tech conference. However, this one was different. Maybe it was the personality of the highlighted speakers (who attended every event) or the charm of St Louis, but there was something special about Venture Draft.

My “wow” moment came right after I had the opportunity to bounce business expansion ideas off keynote speaker Henry Wong of Garage Technology Ventures at a local cigar bar. As I was walking out of the bar to a sponsored after party, Jim Sorgi struck up a conversation about his future with the Colts and time on Gilman Street. Wow, this conference was pretty cool.

Continue here to the Hardin Design & Development Blog for the rest!

Shark Tank “Entities” Can Take 5% Equity No Matter What

We talk about Shark Tank on ABC here on nibletz.com quite a bit. That’s partly because it’s a great show about startups and partly because no matter what we’ve reported it’s still my favorite show.

In fact, Daymond John and Mark Cuban have done some great things for entrepreneurs, startups, and even students interested in startups and entrepreneurship. Both Cuban and John speak regularly at entrepreneurship conferences and colleges. John even held a Google+ hangout for high school students studying business.

We recently obtained the application for your business to appear on the Shark Tank. It’s not a top secret application or anything like that. Just about any entrepreneur interested in Shark Tank’s open casting calls can obtain the same application.

We highly advise, that if you’re planning on pitching your startup to Shark Tank in their open casting call, and especially if you make it past that point that you read the fine print.

As the headline states, Shark Tank producer’s Finnmax, Sony Pictures Television, and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), have some very interesting rights, if you chose to appear on the show.

First off they have an option to receive a 2% royalty of the operating profits of any business that actually appears on the show itself, regardless of whether the sharks invest.

If they decide not to take the 2% royalty they have the option to instead take a 5% equity interest in the business.

Now keep in mind this 5% equity investment isn’t in exchange for any funding at all and isn’t contingent on the startup getting funding from one of the sharks. This is just for appearing on the show itself.

That section of the application does go onto say that the “Shark Tank Entities” will give good faith consideration as to which of the two options the business owner/entrepreneur wants them to have, be it the 2% royalty or 5% equity, however it’s at the sole discretion of the “entities” and the irrevocable option is available for two years.

Shark Tank is currently on break but will return for a fourth season and I will watch every episode as I’ve done on the previous three seasons. But now we all know a little more about the show.

Linkage

Read this story about when a Shark Tank startup gets reneged on

See more of our Shark Tank stories here

Chicago: Daymond John To Speak At Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference May 23-25

FUBU founder and ABC’s Shark Tank, shark and investor, Daymond John will be speaking at the Black Enterprise Entrepreneur’s conference in Chicago later this month. The conference is put on in conjunction with Nationwide insurance and over 1200 entrepreneurs, business owners, startup founders as well local and national business leaders.

John joins the likes of Gina Neely from Downhome with the Neely’s, Kim Coles, and national radio personality Michael Baisden. There is a complete list available here.

The Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference covers just about every aspect of business life. They are also holding the “Black Enterprise Elevator Pitch Competition”, Small Business Successs Bootcamp, and “Equity Date With An Angel” which John will help kick off.

In addition to running his clothing empire and appearing on Shark Tank, Daymond John is a nationally known and respected speaker on all topics having to do with business, entrepreneurship and startups. He was recently the featured guest in a town hall meeting for high school students studying business across the country. This event was held in a Google Hangout setting, one of the largest Google Hangouts to date. Google hosted John at their New York office so that he could participate in the event.

More after the break
Read More…

Utah High School Teacher Organizes Entrepreneurship/Startup Google+ Hangout With Shark Tank’s Daymond John

Daymond John the entrepreneur and brains behind the worldwide brand FuBu has been speaking to folks about the trials and tribulations of startups and entrepreneurship for years. Since he took his business from the trunk of the car and made it a recognized brand on every street corner in America and around the world John has been passionate about business. It also helps that he has been one of the panelists on ABC’s Shark Tank for all three seasons.

That’s why Utah High School Business teacher Jeff McCauley was resilient in trying to contact John for some kind of entrepreneurship event with his students. Originally McCauley had wanted to Skype with John and his class however that idea took a pivot in the year it took to nail a date down. What ended up happening was nothing short of phenomenal for the over 100 high school kids around the country that attended the hangout on Google’s Google+ Hangout platform.

McCauley is no stranger to Shark Tank either. He admits to showing the program to his students to show real life examples of the lessons that he teaches everyday.

More after the break
Read More…