Want to Understand America? Watch ‘Shark Tank.’

One day in late June, a panel of investors entertained business ideas from around the country. A kitschy advent calendar. A fancy mini-fridge for drinks. A flashlight that emits beams from multiple angles. A machine that grows mushrooms. Bendable cups. Pet plants (for you, not your cat).

This was the Los Angeles set of “Shark Tank,” the ABC show that for 15 years has turned business negotiation into entertainment. Aspiring entrepreneurs use hustle, gross margins and cringe-worthy pitches to pry money from the so-called Sharks in exchange for a stake in their companies.

On one level, “Shark Tank” is your basic reality TV show. The pitches, which last about 45 minutes, are edited to snappy 12- to 15-minute segments with music scored for suspense over tight shots of bug-eyed, sweaty supplicants. Some founders leave the tank defeated, humiliated or in tears. Others leave triumphant with handshake deals. Stories about overcoming struggle and self-doubt feel calibrated to make you cry.

With a short window to impress the Sharks, contestants make the most of “hello.”

ABC

But if you watch the show as I did — most of its 15 seasons in one year — you might be struck by something else: the way it reflects the shifting contours of the American economy. The show started in August 2009, in the pit of the Great Recession. Over the next decade and a half, 1,275 people pitched their ideas on air. The comfort food and DVDs featured in those first years were replaced by the rise of online direct-to-consumer businesses, the allure of Silicon Valley and its build-at-all-costs mentality, and then the shock of the pandemic and the ingenuity that came out of it.

You can also see the emergence of consumer trends: online dating (the Coffee Meets Bagel app); combining capitalism with social good (Bombas socks); democratizing professional services (Everlywell home medical tests); reimagining personal care products (Dude Wipes). And, of course, the show has featured plenty of minimally useful, niche gimmicks that are destined to collect dust.

“‘Shark Tank’ is not a game show,” said Kevin O’Leary, a cutthroat investor known sarcastically in the tank as Mr. Wonderful. “It’s real life. It’s real investing, real money. And it reflects the real economy.”

It is also real exposure. Perhaps the show’s most important role in the entrepreneurial economy is not the advice or money the Sharks dispense, but to serve as a platform for the most American of business strategies: shameless self-promotion.

That exposure might be even more relevant now. As the show enters its 16th season on Oct. 18, the economy seems good on paper, but feels bad for many Americans, including entrepreneurs. Yes, inflation is starting to ease and interest rates are slowly coming down, but the economy still feels in suspense.

The show has been adjusting over the past few years. The Sharks are less excited about businesses with big valuations and more interested in discovering and funding smaller start-ups, said Barbara Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Group who got rich selling Manhattan real estate and has appeared as a Shark since the show’s first season. “So there are a lot of low asks, which I really like because I love to get on the ground floor with people,” she told me.

These “mom-and-pa type people,” as Ms. Corcoran calls them, also make for better TV. Where “Shark Tank” is concerned, good TV comes from stoking a belief — some might call it a myth — that anybody with a good idea and some moxie can make it in America. Having difficulty brushing your daughter’s curly hair? A flash of genius provides the solution and you create a hairbrush company! It’s the American dream.

In fact, the Sharks invoked the American dream so often in my interviews with them that it felt like they were trying to make a sale. Mark Cuban, who is leaving the show after this season, put it this way: “The idea that maybe we had a little bit to do with amplifying entrepreneurship and making the American dream stronger, that’s pretty damn cool, you know?”

From Bakeries to Bots

The “Shark Tank” concept grew out of a Japanese show called “Tigers of Money.” It spread to Britain and Canada as “Dragons’ Den,” and in 2009, Mark Burnett, the television producer known for hit shows like “The Apprentice” and “Survivor,” adapted the idea for the United States.

It was, in some ways, exactly the wrong moment for a show about making it in business. “Shark Tank” debuted less than a year after the subprime mortgage crisis devastated the global economy. The investment firm Lehman Brothers had gone belly up and banks were not lending. Retail sales cratered. But the investors chosen as Sharks saw the show as a new way to make money. “It’s ’08, nobody’s buying more clothes and they can’t pay their rent or mortgage,” said Daymond John, the founder of apparel brand FUBU. “I went on the show to diversify my portfolio.”

That first season Mr. John and the other Sharks were pitched by a lot of sole proprietors: a woman opening a plus-size clothing boutique in Houston, a caregiver who created an elephant-shaped medicine dispenser. The money offered was $100,000 here, $50,000 there. Small potatoes.

Every pitch leads to an ask, a dollars-and-percent offer that starts the negotiation with the Sharks.

ABC

The producers and casting department recruited entrepreneurs by looking at local newspapers or relying on word of mouth. Tod Wilson, the first person to pitch in the “tank,” was one of them. He owned a bakery that sold sweet potato pies in Somerset, N.J., and wanted to expand nationwide.

“I had a couple small loans with some local community banks, but nobody was lending any more money,” Mr. Wilson said. On the show, Mr. John and Ms. Corcoran offered him a deal.

By the third season, in 2012, it was time to feel optimistic again. Businesses were making it pleasant to buy stuff online that you usually need to feel and touch — like clothes and eyeglasses. Uber, Airbnb and WeWork, with their outsize valuations, emboldened many companies to think they could hit it big. Instagram and Twitter, along with the ubiquity of Amazon Marketplace, offered new ways to sell goods.

Shark Tank, too, wanted a piece of Silicon Valley.

Producers recruited more ambitious companies through open calls held at Las Vegas convention centers and pitch sessions hosted on college campuses. Sweet potato pies gave way to apps and cloud-based solutions. In episode after episode, viewers saw entrepreneurship as a pathway to financial success and autonomy. The show was growing in popularity, and by Season 6 in 2014, had reached 9.1 million people tuning in per episode.

“The idea that anybody can make it into that top echelon, I think, is an incredibly American mind set,” said Angela Lee, who teaches at Columbia Business School.

In the first season, the average valuation for a company that appeared on the show was $376,000; a decade later, it had ballooned to $2.4 million, according to a database compiled by Halle Tecco, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School who tracked the first 10 seasons of “Shark Tank.” The average amount the Sharks agreed to invest nearly doubled.

The Sharks didn’t always spot the winners. In 2013, the producers reached out to Jamie Siminoff, a successful serial entrepreneur who was tinkering in his garage with a product he called DoorBot.

Like all the entrepreneurs who appear on the show, Mr. Siminoff walked down a long hallway to the double doors that open up to the awaiting Sharks. But instead of those doors opening, Mr. Siminoff knocked three times, prompting Mr. Cuban to ask, “Who’s there?” After some back and forth, the door opened and Mr. Siminoff said, “Wouldn’t it have been nice to know who was behind the door before you let me in?”

He demonstrated how, with a smartphone and his video doorbell, anyone could see who was standing at their door. He had already sold more than $1 million of the devices through his own website alone.

The ensuing negotiations made for good TV. Four Sharks declined to invest, leaving only Mr. O’Leary. He offered Mr. Siminoff an infusion of cash in return for a percentage of every sale. Mr. Siminoff balked, saying those payments would bleed him of cash when he needed it most. With the suspense soundtrack playing underneath, Mr. Siminoff responded: “Respectfully, Mr. Wonderful, we’re going to decline.”

A year later, Mr. Siminoff renamed his business Ring, and four years after that, Amazon bought it for more than $1 billion.

At the time of his “Shark Tank” appearance, Mr. Siminoff “was actually broke, so I did want to get money,” he told me recently. “I didn’t get money, but I got awareness and credibility, which was amazing. I think if it wasn’t for ‘Shark Tank,’ I don’t think Ring would exist today.”

Mr. Siminoff came back as a guest shark in 2018; all the Sharks stood up and clapped.

The QVC Economy

Companies appearing on “Shark Tank” have reinvented the wheel (though the Smart Tire Company didn’t convince the Sharks it was needed). One contender confidently asserted that he had created a “vortex chamber” that harnesses the Earth’s rotation to create electricity. (The Sharks didn’t get it either. He left empty-handed.) The Sharks were pitched a wakeboard-like device that, when attached to an airplane, would allow people to fly. (No thanks. Too much of a liability risk.)

There are a lot of crazy inventions out there.

There are some pretty mind-numbing ones, too (insurance, enterprise software, energy production) that power the economy. But those kinds of companies are rarely reflected on “Shark Tank” for one simple reason: They don’t make for good TV.

Robert Herjavec, a Shark since the first season, has an expertise in cybersecurity. He likes to tell the story of taking Mr. Burnett out for dinner in the show’s early years and asking why producers weren’t bringing to the sound stage more of the back-end companies he gravitated toward.

As Mr. Herjavec recalls, Mr. Burnett told him, “I don’t know how to say this to you, but what you do is boring. You’re missing the entire point of the show.”

That dinner, Mr. Herjavec says, changed his perspective. “I need to invest in things that the consumer is going to get excited about,” he said.

What people get excited about, it turns out, is merchandise that you might purchase impulsively in the checkout line at TJ Maxx. Or, in Target or on the QVC shopping network, platforms where Lori Greiner, one of the mainstay Sharks, has strong connections. “What is a winning product? What do people want? Those are the basics,” Ms. Greiner said.

More than two-thirds of the U.S. economy is driven by consumer spending, and while that includes less tangible things like auto insurance, Ms. Greiner leans into the relatable. She has backed “Shark Tank” companies with some of the biggest sales: Scrub Daddy, the smiley-faced sponge; Simply Fit, the exercise balance board; and the Squatty Potty toilet stool.

Mr. Herjavec learned his lesson. Soon after his dinner with Mr. Burnett, he took an equity stake in what he says is his most memorable investment: Tipsy Elves, a company that makes ugly Christmas sweaters. It has done about $200 million in sales.

What You Don’t See in the Tank

Venture capitalists praise the show for introducing the masses to business concepts like “landed costs” and “scaling.” The show has also helped entrepreneurs find out what their company is worth.

Founders coming from small towns who might not have deep connections to major investors can use “Shark Tank” as a barometer, said Michael Jones, founding partner of Science Inc, a Los Angeles-based investment firm which has poured money into consumer brands like the canned water company Liquid Death and Dollar Shave Club.

“You can get a sense of what terms at least the Sharks think are normal,” he said.

But, venture capitalists are often quick to add, the show does not reveal the nitty-gritty of the negotiation process. The painstaking effort of combing through a company’s financials and ownership structure and analyzing the market sector happens off camera.

During that process, deals agreed to during the taping might be restructured or the founders or Sharks are allowed to walk away. According to an 2023 analysis from Forbes, roughly half of the deals clinched on the show never actually closed.

“They’re a platform to promote entrepreneurship and small businesses,” said Taryn Jones Laeben, founder of early-stage advisory and investment firm IRL Ventures, “more than they are a direct window into the venture capital world.”

Tod Wilson, the pie maker who appeared on the very first episode and received a handshake deal, decided not to go through with the offer. He eventually secured a bank loan. After some ups and downs, he continues to sell in Wegmans and ShopRite supermarkets as well as online.

He beat the odds. While the show promotes the upside of the American dream, many entrepreneurs face constant challenges to stay in business. Nearly half of all small businesses fail within the first five years.

“I don’t think people know how hard it is to be one of the ones that have made it,” Ms. Lee, the Columbia Business School professor, said. “The problem with social media and everything is that we only hear about the success stories.”

Marketing Muscle

Ms. Lee is also the founder of 37 Angels, an early-stage investment firm. She says she has done due diligence on dozens of companies that have appeared on “Shark Tank.” None of them, she says, described the show primarily as way to get funding. It was a way to market their products.

With nearly 4 million viewers, the show has become a cultural phenomenon. Dozens of blogs and podcasts are dedicated to the show and hundreds of memes on social media reference it (“Hello sharks. Today I am seeking $100,000 so I can just vibe for a bit”). Educators like Ms. Lee use episodes as case studies, and educational programs like Junior Achievement use it to teach students about how to start businesses.

Sarah Paiji Yoo, one of the founders of Blueland, which makes sustainable cleaning products, didn’t really need an investment. By the time she appeared on the show in 2019, she had already raised $3 million in venture capital. The funding she got from Mr. O’Leary was about “driving more awareness of our product,” and credibility, she told me later. Her company has now done more than $200 million in sales.

Dave Heath, co-founder of Bombas, the sock retailer, described the show as a “megaphone.” He appeared in 2014, and two months later his company sold $1.2 million worth of socks. Bombas has now surpassed $1.7 billion in lifetime revenue, making it the show’s most successful company.

Reinventing the wheel isn’t necessary to impress the Sharks. But some have tried.

ABC

The possibility of television exposure also piques the interest of traditional retailers. Ann Crady Weiss, the co-founder of Hatch, was scheduled to tape a “Shark Tank” segment with her husband to pitch a baby changing pad that doubled as a scale. Before the filming, she flew out to Target’s headquarters in Minneapolis to meet a buyer.

“I decided to leverage the fact that we were going to be on TV,” Ms. Weiss recounted. “The buyer gave us a shot at Target because of the ‘Shark Tank’ appearance.”

“We turn you into a rock star and you become part of the ‘Shark Tank’ culture and the lore of ‘Shark Tank’,” said Mr. O’Leary. “Your deal becomes legend and stays in syndication for decades. What venture capital can do that?”

On the weekend in June, toward the end of the second day of “Shark Tank” tapings, a young man in a black T-shirt burst through the set’s familiar doors to pitch his restaurant in Queens. He had saved $600,000, which impressed the Sharks, who offered encouragement. At one point, Mr. O’Leary said, “you should be mentoring me.”

Near the end of his time in front of them, Mr. John stood up, walked over and handed him his personal phone number.

“This is what I wanted,” the founder said before walking off.