Dave: Hey everyone, Dave here with another episode of the Philly Tech Entrepreneurs Podcast. Today I’m speaking with Mr. Jake Vorhees. Jake’s an awesome dude; he’s been a major contributor to the community, very active. We’ve been having a lot of conversations about the events that we’re running. He runs a marketing agency like myself, but unlike me, he has been seen on Shark Tank, he has over 100,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, and he has been a TEDx speaker and organizer for years. So just a lot of experience in the personal branding space and a lot of areas that honestly, I don’t have as much expertise. Really excited to talk with him today and learn more about his experience on Shark Tank because, let’s be honest, that’s always something really interesting for entrepreneurs. Jake, how you doing today?
Jake: Thank you, Dave. Happy to be here on the podcast. Really thrilled to be a part of the PTE community. Came on my radar just a couple of months back, and going to your events and seeing what you’re curating here in Philadelphia, it’s been awesome. I’ve been a member of the entrepreneurial world here for three years, and it really feels like there’s some cool stuff happening in 2024. So happy to be here and be a part of your community, Dave.
Dave: Yeah, it’s great. You know, when we get on the radar of guys like yourself who have been much more tapped into the ecosystem, and you know, we’ve seen each other at like PSL events. And I know that you’re also connected potentially with like Founders Institute and just a whole host of other communities that I know we’re doing something right, and I’ve been really appreciative to kind of get your advice on how to guide the community. That being said, you know, I do want to hear about the Shark Tank stuff because it’s just not an experience that we kind of get every day. So I’ve really not done a lot of research about this, and you with respect to this. So I’m going to kind of go with the basics here. Tell me a little bit about, you know, what, when are we talking, like, how long ago was this? What was the business? Why did you decide to go on Shark Tank? Give me kind of the story.
Jake: Great, great 40,000-foot question. So my background is civil engineering. I did that in college and worked in that professionally for almost 10 years. But that entire time, I was side hustling other stuff and sort of knew that there was more out there for me. And went to UD, moved back to Delaware, you know, Philly metro area almost five, six years ago now. And I joined a startup after leaving my corporate engineering firm. And the founder, Marus, was very good at pitch competitions. He had won a small check here, a small check there. And we just made this decision over a six to n month period to get super aggressive with pitching and wanted to really be in the business of winning pitch competitions and winning funding. That was just about being a good salesman around your actual startup, whether the actual business, the fundamentals, the tech, the MVP, the community. It was really just the pitch part. And so we just got more and more ambitious and got crazy. And then one day, we decided to drive 10 hours to go pitch Shark Tank. And that’s kind of how it all started. This was 2019.
Dave: Wow, awesome. That’s not even really like that long ago. I thought you were going to say this was like 2012 or something. That’s great that this is even more recent experience. I would love to be someone who was great at pitches. It’s like one of those skills that like usually is connected with money sometimes. So, you know, what was being pitched? What was this concept?
Jake: Yeah, absolutely. So the existing business, and you’re right, pitching is such an unbelievable skill. And you throwing these pitch events. I mean, think about just seeing these people over and over again. Um, is such a good way to get good at it. Um, so the business that we were pitching was a brick-and-mortar sort of commoditized business where if you break your smartphone, you have two options. If you have, say, an iPhone, you either walk into an Apple Store and pay a lot of money, or you walk into one of these businesses that can repair your device for you in an hour or two for a short fee. People see them everywhere, You Break I Fix. There’s a brand on every corner. But no national company had done what, for example, Brian Scud did for 1-800-GOT-JUNK! and unified all of these businesses. There’s about 8,000 in America, and did this universal branding. So what we were pitching on the show was a version of that with a mobile store. Everybody knows the Nerd Now Ambulance here in Delaware. I’m actually sitting here in Wilmington right now. Um, and then we had come up with a concept to use the mobile store in conjunction with a scaling plan, which was similar to Amazon Dropbox lockers. So we had prototypes, we had the existing store, we had customers, we had sales, but we didn’t really have the model out there in the world working. And so we didn’t get a deal, but that was, in essence, the pitch, if that helps, Dave.
Dave: Yeah, no, that’s very clear. And I can kind of see how that would be useful in the market. People break their phones and tech all the time, and I had something recently as well, and I went to basically like a U Fix type of scenario. Um, you got to shop around, you got to see what the prices are. Uh, there’s no yeah, 1-800-GOT-JUNK! version. So, you know, from the very little bit of what I understand from Shark Tank, is you don’t just, you know, immediately kind of get put in front of Mark Cuban. Like there’s various levels of pitching and things like that that you kind of have to go through to get vetted. Um, so what was it like, like, yeah, what was kind of the process like once you got there?
Jake: Yeah, absolutely. So we signed a bunch of NDAs about this, but I can speak loosely on shows and podcasts as long as we don’t give the brass tacks so that somebody can just reverse engineer the show. So you got it. There’s two ways you can either submit a video pitch online, which we thought there’s no way for us to stand out. So we chose to drive and then we pitched in person to an event. I have photos of the wristband. I think I saved it. We were like number 187. The line wrapped all the way around the building. People were camped out. It was nuts. So there was that, the first like actual show up in person. That’s what I would suggest is go to an event. There’s conferences where there’s a Shark Tank team that tours all year and does these pitch partnerships with conferences. So go do that. And then what you want to do is be dynamic, theatrical. You want to stand out in the crowd. We were like smashing phones and like being crazy. And a lot of these guys, you know, they would pitch, you walk into a room, this is the live pitch. You don’t pitch a panel of judges. You don’t have a private room. There’s like mayhem. It’s like a flea market of pitching. There were like six, seven, eight pitches happening at once. You only got one judge. So if they were confused or missed a detail or didn’t resonate, your pitch didn’t resonate with them, you’re done. So, you know, we’re again smashing phones in the room. Our judge just wrote down a full page of notes and asked us questions for like five minutes when a lot of people there were like, yep, thanks, we’ll be in touch. Next, next, next. And you can kind of tell that you failed that first person. So then they made you wait. They like made us bake for two weeks. They said if you don’t hear back for two weeks, you’re out. Like, no news is bad news, dude. They made us soak. Honestly, I remember it was Friday night, and it was like the last day. We’re like, what did we do wrong? How did we not get a callback after doing so well in person in Kentucky? We drove to the University of Louisville the week of the Kentucky Derby to pitch in person. And we get this email like seven o’clock on a Friday, and it’s like, congratulations, almost like they were playing with our heartstrings. Same thing, okay, you’ve advanced to the next round. Here’s what you got to do. We didn’t even read the email. We, like, celebrated that Friday night. Marus and I dig into it on Sunday, and it’s like, here’s what you got to do. It felt like sophomore year in engineering where they hit us with a bunch of stuff to make us drop out. They’re like, all right, you got to print off this PDF. All three of you that we’re going to be on the show, it was me, Marus, and a guy who had helped Marus kick off the company named Jay. All three of you got to fill it out in pencil, and then you need to do a 10-minute video, and you can’t upload it to the internet. Put it on a hard drive, and you got to mail these physical applications and this video to Sony Production Studios in seven days. And if you don’t, you’re out. Seven days. And we’re like, wait, what? So we pulled an all-nighter that week and did this video, did all these applications. So they made us jump through like two of these rounds of like crazy hoops, right? Pitching in person and then getting through the one week of deadlines where I think most people, unless you’re serious, you drop out. It’s too much work. And then it went quiet for a bit, and it sort of changed. Then we got paired with producers. So it was like, oh, they really think that we have what it takes to be on the show. The narrative was always like, hey, if you tell anybody, you do anything wrong, you slip up on all these rules, you’re out. It was always this very threatening like, you’re out if you do anything wrong. But then we got paired with these producers, and one of the main questions we get was like, hey, did you guys come up with a pitch? And like 85 – 90% of it was us. They helped us dial it in, but they really gave us the freedom to come up with it. So that was fun. And then one day throughout this producer pairing, they were like, hey, can you guys come to California? And we’re like, wait, what? And it was all very like, we needed to be along for their roller coaster and follow their crazy rules or it was just over. And we followed it. And then all of a sudden, six months into this, we were on TV. It was wild.
Dave: Wow, yeah, that’s that is kind of a crazy story. You sort of expect that, like, yeah, it’s going to be like very organized and things like that, but it feels very sort of like they just drop things on you out of nowhere, and it’s like, hey, are you okay to drop everything that you’re going to do and do this? And because, you know, it’s Shark Tank and they have a lot of clout and, you know, influence, and the opportunity is so big, you’re kind of like, well, sure, yeah, I’ll just do whatever you say. And that’s why they know they can kind of do it like that. You know, thanks for kind of describing the inner experience. I can imagine that must have been a roller coaster ride over the course of weeks and months of just, you know, as you put things out there, but then you don’t know if you’re going to hear back, and there’s all these different stages and stuff like that. You know, how did you feel that the actual pitch went in front of the Sharks?
Jake: Yeah, and just to drill into something that you just said, the craziest part about it was keeping it as a secret. Like, we couldn’t even tell our moms because we were afraid it would leak. And it’s like, oh, my, you know, proud of nerd at now with the Shark Tank journey. And it’s like, no. So, yes, keeping it a secret to all of us, that was the hardest thing. So to answer your question, do I think the experience was positive and like what do I think of the experience?
Dave: What was the, yeah, yeah. Know your experience and basically also like being in front of the actual Sharks is, if I’m not mistaken, right? Like, you know, being on TV and everything.
Jake: Yeah. The two questions we get the most were, were they mean to you guys and were you guys nervous? And they really weren’t mean to us. I don’t know if they treated us differently. I really think most of it’s produced in the lab. They make them look like buttheads to each other. They’re realistically mean to each other. It’s called Shark crosstalk. They want to be mean. That’s like the drama of the show. But when they embarrass the actual pitchers, I think they’re manufacturing that quite a bit in the lab. They’re splicing stuff together to make it look. Yeah. Because they could have definitely, we like biffed on a question or two. They could have put that in there and they didn’t. They made us look like pros even though we didn’t get a deal. They made us look good. So, yeah, they weren’t mean. And then the other question I get about the, in general, the experience in general is everybody’s like, were you nervous to be in front of them? Were you nervous? Were you nervous? And I had like a little bit of on-camera training. No, like broadcast background or no reason to walk in there and just be like, oh, yeah, you know, I remember feeling like I should be nervous. But then like when we’re getting like powdered up and like put in the professional. I remember being like, man, I’m not nervous. Like, I don’t know if it was because we were so prepared. We barely practiced that day, too. We did like one rehearsal that morning. So maybe it was just so dialed in. But, yeah, the overall experience was incredible. We had to beg them to get the truck on the show. Being out in California was awesome. It was really incredible to like, do the practice. We did a drive rehearsal the day before filming. There was like 50 Shark Tank people in the room. It was unbelievable. It felt like we were pitching to like a picnic barbecue. All these like tables in the makeshift tables. But, yeah, the experience was incredible.
Dave: Very cool. I love it, man. Well, I mean, you know, entrepreneurship has kind of ups and downs. You guys didn’t walk away with a deal, you know, which was too bad. You know, where did kind of the mood go from there? Like, was that I mean, I you know, I’m not trying to like, make you cry on screen, you know, like, like, like bar Walter style or something, like, was that like, crushing or was it sort of like, okay, and then, you know, hey, let’s go and do what we were doing anyway, like, how did you guys move on from that?
Jake: Oh, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve cried on a podcast, by the way. I have plenty of YouTube videos where I’m like super vulnerable and transparent with the audience. I love it. I think that’s the way to be. So, since we are on such a tear winning all these things, we were convinced we were going to get a deal. Like, we went in there being like boom, boom, boom, like get back to Delaware, you know. We walked in there convinced that we are going to get something, right? And so to handle questions for like almost an hour and then to hesitate briefly on one. And I know we, I didn’t give you the anecdote, but they hit us with a question. They kind of steered our pitch into a direction that wasn’t exactly what we were doing. And we let them do that. And then it hit us with a question that we couldn’t answer. And they could tell. And it was like all the air left the room. And then Mark Cuban, after being like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m like, oh, man, we’re going to get a deal with Mark Cuban. He went out first. And then all four of the rest of the Sharks went out. And so we walked out of there kind of being speechless for the rest of the day. I mean, I remember Marus being very affected by it because, again, it would be like being that tomorrow is Christmas Day. And then it like didn’t happen, right? It’s like, oh, no. So, yeah, I would say for like two or three days, it was pretty devastating. We even had like car trouble coming home, like, movie-type stuff on the way out. Yeah, we got like stranded in Denver, couldn’t pay bills in Denver to like fix the ambulance. It was wild. But then after like maybe two, three, certainly 30 days after, it’s like, hey, right back to the drawing board. And then it’s just like we got to wait, even though that was the other devastating part. We couldn’t talk about this with anybody. Even if we had like mentors and business partners who could like console us on this, we couldn’t reveal it because if it leaked, then all this effort was wasted and we’d never be broadcasted, right? So it was a weird thing, but we kept, kept right on moving. And then, um, it didn’t matter that we didn’t get a deal. Just being on the show is the victory.
Dave: Yeah, that’s, that’s very cool. How long does it take to air after, you know, you had done the recording? Like, is it months or?
Jake: That’s a great question. So we pitched in, in April or May. And then we were filming by two, three months after that in the summer. We thought we were going to have to wait a full year until the next spring. And that’s when they called us in October. We’re like, hey, we got a slot for this fall. Are you guys ready? We’re like, no, but yes. You don’t want to say, oh, no, let’s wait till spring, because then you know your opportunity could be gone. So the whole process was only six months. And it should have been more like 12.
Dave: Nice. I mean, you know, it’s still a while to, to be holding a secret, but it’s definitely better to do six than 12. And then, you know, when, when it did go live, was there, you know, hey, you don’t get a deal fine, but, you know, was there, did you get some messages, some shout outs, someone getting in touch with you? Like what was the kind of the fanfare afterward?
Jake: yeah we had as great question I really like the like the specificity within these questions we had so many mentors and people everybody knew like you got to Market this do a big watch party you got to mark it you know at the front end of the release like hit it hit it hit it but we never really looked at like the the long-term impact of it and that’s what I’ll I’ll communicate to you now so they said it was going to be about $5 million of marketing it it felt like 500 million like you know reiring the episode everybody’s talking about it me and marus were wearing the bomber jackets
around town and like everybody knew who we were it was like kind of crazy you know um but then what happened how the residue of it was that we would use it as an Ace card in meetings I still use it as an Ace card for myself today where a meeting will go on and it’s like blah blah blah it’s like oh yeah did you know and we it almost didn’t matter what we said then we’re like did you know about Shark Tank and then they’re like wait what and then they’re like yeah yeah yeah we’re it and like the handshake would just happen it was like this Nobel Prize I would call it that was like our
Nobel Prize and I didn’t expect that that people would treat it like oh wow so it it was super helpful and I would encourage anybody to go For Broke with something like a shark tank type experience because it was worth it that’s cool
Dave: I love to hear that so I guess I my final question is uh you know what what so where did the business kind of go like uh you know it’s still obviously this you know even after a success like Shark Tank I’m sure there’s still like a lot of work that needs to be done you know there’s still questions that were maybe unanswered at that time so you know you know tell us the end of the story.
Jake: yeah I again love it’s almost like we planned out these sequence
Dave: I it’s conversational I’m just like asking questions that like I want to know the answer to you know
Jake: yeah so it’s pretty crazy but we aired in the end of October 2019 and so you know just a couple months into that we are hit with Covid and everything and what’s funny is that everybody knows Tech and certain industries you know a a Leisure wear and certain things really ey makeup like certain industries really boosted during covid one that most people don’t talk about is the computer industry so everybody had to come up with a new Chromebook for their kids at home new monitors everybody had to fortify their home office so we had just hit Shark Tank in October and then Covid hits in March April and so the whole state of Delaware is looking at nerd it now to like solve you know these School districtwide Statewide computer problems so instead of rolling out this thing that was going to be a physical kiosk out there in heavily trafficed pedestrian centers we literally paused what we were pitching on this on the show and just used all the momentum to be like Delaware’s computer champion and that really worked out um so it it cascaded into all these other things that we didn’t expect there’s still a whole bunch of kiosks that aren’t in the world like if you go over to the facility maras has like 10 that aren’t out there so there’s still plans we have some partners that are planning on doing it you know you have to have a a location to host the actual kiosk just like an Amazon Dropbox locker but it’s not out there rolling in the way that we we uh thought it would be because life everything changed and the business is a little different but I still think it can happen so we’ll see that’s
Dave: Cool man uh love a great story uh thanks for kind of you know presenting that to us and being like really transparent about you know the inner workings and stuff of the show with you know with respect to what you’re able to talk about um people that want to get in touch they want to learn more about what you’re up to I know that maybe you know nerd now is not exactly uh your main thing right now but uh I don’t know actually but whatever it is you know what where can people find you?
Jake: Yeah nerded now as a client today so I was like employee number one back on the show um know I wasn’t one of the founders of the business which is why I’m no longer like officially with them but no me and Marus and the founders are super close working with them today if anybody wants to reach out to me and uh you know talk about any sort of pitch stuff marketing any sort of presentation things even just the stuff that Dave and I are up to in this awesome Philadelphia Tech entrepreneurship ecosystem send me an email hello@jake.com I’m Jake Vorhees everywhere my YouTube channel is Jake Vorhees Instagram my business is JakeVorhees.com so reach out send me a message and love to chat some more and you can get in the PTE slack group and DM me that’s the best way right there you go
Dave: Thanks a lot man appreciate it