Analyzing the Pitch with "Shark Tank"

After our June weekend discussing and practicing "The Pitch" I decided to watch some pitches in action. In my small group on Sunday, the show Shark Tank came up as a kind of pop culture touchstone for the pitch that many people were familiar with. Thinking about the steps we incorporated into a successful pitch, I wondered a) whether or not the participants in Shark Tank always incorporated these steps into their pitches and b) if incorporating these steps had any impact on their success (agreeing to a deal with a "Shark"). I was also curious about the length of the pitches, although cognizant of the fact that this was a television program, and that portions may have been edited out, thus affecting the length of the pitch I saw.

With all of these questions in mind, I watched 10 pitches from various episodes of the show and kept track of the length of the pitch, which steps of a successful pitch they incorporated into their pitch, and whether or not they reached a deal with one of the Sharks. Although I am by no means a statistician, and realize that a sample size of 10 is incredibly small, I still found some useful quantitative and qualitative results that I thought would make for an interesting blog post.

The 10 pitches I watched were randomly selected across three episodes that had originally aired on 1/24/14, 2/28/14, and 3/7/14, and I watched them online. I used the following checklist to keep track of the info for each pitch as I watched:

Of the 10 pitches I watched, it was a 50/50 split of participants getting deals versus not getting deals, as illustrated by this chart:

5 participants received deals; 4 did not receive deals; and 1 was offered a deal but declined

I then looked at the successful pitches to see whether or not they had incorporated all 4 steps (including the 4 sub-steps of Step #2) into the pitches. I weighted each step and sub-step evenly, meaning that every time a pitch incorporated one of the steps it received a point, and came up with the following data:

None of the pitches achieved a "perfect 7" of incorporating each component of the 4 steps into their pitch. For instance, only the first two were able to be truly memorable in terms of the "Your Pitch, The Itch" step to really get the audience (both the Sharks and myself as the viewing audience) engaged. Additionally, only Pitch #5 was able to incorporate all 4 sub-steps of Step #2 (The Problem --> The Opportunity <-- The Solution), but it also didn't successfully include Steps #1 and #4 into the pitch. And while all 5 pitches included "The Ask" step, this was always in the presumably mandated portion of the show when the participants tell the Sharks--as potential investors--exactly how much equity of their business they would be willing to give up in exchange for the amount of money they are requesting. This was my biggest qualitative observation, and in fact, for a couple of pitches (Swimzip and Freshly Picked, to be specific) would not have received their point for the Ask had they not appeared on the program, since I didn't remember it happening during the pitch, but know that it occurred because of the show's format.

Finally, I thought about the length of the pitch, and whether or not the pitches formally "ended" before the Sharks jumped in with their questions (another aspect of the pitch that is really enforced by the set up of the show, and not necessarily because of the strength of the pitch or the Sharks desiring to know more save for the process of filming the show.) From timing each successful pitch, I made the following chart:

The length of the pitch only consisted of the participants going through the steps of the pitch; I stopped timing once the Sharks really started asking questions and grilling the sharks. Again, although much of the interactions between the Sharks and the participants was likely edited out, an average pitch length of ~2:00 minutes seemed reasonable considering the nature of what the participants were pitching and asking of the Sharks. 

What was most interesting to me about doing this exercise was how much the pitches on the show really adhered to what we learned and practiced about pitching in class, even taking into consideration all of the potential constraints of doing a pitch on a show like Shark Tank, not to mention the editing and condensing of the interactions that is happening to make the show ready to air on TV.