‘I Want To Draw a Cat For You’ on Canadian Shark Tank | Mark Cuban

Shark Tank – an accredited reality TV show similar to that of Dragons’ Den where start-up entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to secure investments from successful venture capitalists that make up the panel. These panelists, or ‘Sharks’, include names such as Robert Herjavec, Kevin O’Leary, and Mark Cuban. One episode on Canadian Shark Tank that caught our attention in particular featured entrepreneur Steve Gadlin with his ‘I want to draw a cat for you’ business.

The episode featured a web designer called Steve Gadlin who owns a cat drawing business. To summarize, Steve draws cats and sells his drawings through his website where his value proposition is asking clients to ‘let me draw a cat for you’. In the episode, Gadlin asked for a $10,000 investment from the sharks in exchange for 25% of his company’s shares.

Some might think and state that his business idea doesn’t make sense; even Steve himself admitted that his cat drawing business might sound bizarre to some people. However, by the end of the episode, Steve Gadlin managed to walk away with an investment from one of the sharks, Mark Cuban, consequently joining Mark Cuban’s portfolio as one of his more unique investments. How did Steve Gadlin do it? How do good investments take place?

Although his idea might seem eccentric, Steve was able to use and present his idea wisely to the venture capitalists. As showcased in the episode, Steve knew how to market his idea well as well as how to turn his idea into a real business. He was able to apply his understanding of the importance of having a good website (due to his background of being a web designer), the concept of media effect (how stories in the news and media can influence the market), and in the end he was able to take advantage of these two factors to effectively market his idea – things that consequently made Mark Cuban invest.  In our perspective, these factors therefore make his business one of the most unique, memorable, and best shark tank investments as people now search “shark tank cat drawing” in Google from their memory of this quirky yet effective episode and business proposal.

If you don’t know how to properly and effectively market your products and/or services, having a great idea can mean nothing! Contact us if you want to get professional advice and help on building the best website for your business!