S07.E14: Hatch Baby, Village Scholarships, Fixed, Beard King

[yeswedo]

Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Chris Sacca, returns to the Tank as a Guest Shark. A husband and wife team has a device for babies to stay on track and parents to stay sane; entrepreneurial twins have an online business that can ease the pain of paying for college; and a man has a tech solution to the dreaded parking ticket. Plus, a follow up on Rugged Races, the events company in which Mark Cuban invested during Season 5.

[Eolivet]

Right when the show started, I decided to drink every time Chris Sacca says "Uber." It's 9:20 and I'm already drunk.

[Pjxf99]

I was just thinking the same thing. Did you know he got into uber early? I wasn't sure if everyone heard. Uber uber uber.

Uber.

[bilgistic]

The changing table woman started 90% of her sentences with "So..."

I'm now striking that word from my vocabulary.

I continue to be thankful that I didn't reproduce.

Edited January 16, 2016 by bilgistic

[katycat74]

Gee did someone on the show invest in Uber? Never would've guessed! God that was annoying!

[Fabricationary]

Wow, a scale that measures how much your baby drinks - what a novel way to solve a problem. You'd have think they would have put ounce markings on bottles by now.

[mjc570]

"Wow, a scale that measures how much your baby drinks - what a novel way to solve a problem. You'd have think they would have put ounce markings on bottles by now. "

No markings on breast milk - I guess that's why she kept stressing it. I have to admit, I didn't under stand the whole point about measuring the baby in order to measure the milk - don't you just feed until the baby stops? Measuring the baby's weight on an on-going basis is important - so why not just say that this is a convenient way to keep track of the baby's weight? Those people were smart, though - knowledgeable in their business and good at business.

I laughed throughout the beard bib bit - those folks were a hoot. I don't know how much of a market there is for that, so it will be interesting to see what "Queen Lori" comes up with.

Speaking of Lori - I happened to notice that she was on QVC, hawking a fold-out cosmetic case (a variant of her fold-out jewelry case, I guess), which really did look useful.

[Saylii]

The baby scale would only be useful if a baby had been labeled "failure to thrive" by a pediatrician and you were monitoring weight on a daily basis to decide if your baby needed a feeding tube. But at the same time, you're seeing your pediatrician every couple of days or weekly. You're also trying different formulas, supplements, etc during that time to get your baby's weight up. So I can see where a scale like that would be useful in that situation.

But I just cannot see any first time mother thinking that they had to know that information all the time. Unless of course Babycenter starts telling them that they're going to be bad parents if they don't have hourly breastmilk feedings and multiple weight measurements per day synced to their smart phone. That could be a very disingenuous way to use that resource to hawk nonsensical crap to unsuspecting mothers-to-be.

[roctavia]

The baby scale thing totally preys on the fears/nerves of first time parents... So unnecessary, especially for $300... There are times when frequent weights are helpful... and lactation consultants in hospitals do use a scale to determine how much a baby drank from the breast, but that is useful for like 1-2 feedings just to make sure baby is getting a decent amount. You don't need to weigh the kid every single feeding. Even as a nervous parent, after 2-3 weeks once breast feeding is well established, this would be even more useless.

Add in that most doctor's offices welcome parents to bring baby in for a weight pretty much any time if they are concerned... this really becomes unnecessary.

I do think people with money who have to have every baby gadget on the planet, no matter how useless would buy this... it's like the sleep monitor things that don't actually work... people buy it because they can. Is that enough people to make a profit? Maybe, since people are ridiculous... but I still think it's a stupid product.

The parking ticket thing just seemed off to me... like a scam... you broke the law, but lets get you out of it because who wants to be penalized for breaking the law!!!

I agree that parking tickets (and speeding tickets and rolling stop stop sign tickets) are annoying as heck, but in most cases they are earned by not following the rules of the road or the parking rules...

Edited January 16, 2016 by Jjrmt

[Jamoche]

But I just cannot see any first time mother thinking that they had to know that information all the time

When she was talking about how she felt about having so much stuff to keep track of as a first time mom, I was reminded of those ads contrasting "you with your first child (everything has to be sanitized to within an inch of its life) and you with your second child (hands kid to grubby car mechanic while she digs in her purse)". In this case, "you with your second child" would be feed baby, pick up baby, bounce baby a bit - yep, baby's growing.

I doubt the target market of first-time yuppie parents is as big as she thinks.

[LittleIggy]

Gee did someone on the show invest in Uber? Never would've guessed! God that was annoying!

And did you know that car ownership is disappearing? Ugh, bring back Ashton Kucher, not the clown in the western shirt, when they need a guest shark.

The picture of a hirsute Kevin was hilarious!

[bilgistic]

Next time on Shark Tank: Entitled Parents--diaper sensors to measure your precious baby's fecal content and consistency.

[marny]

These may have been the 4 dumbest businesses shown in one episode. The crowd funding app (that doesn't even exist yet) was nonsense; the silly baby scale was a way to take advantage of paranoid but wealthy parents who need to use their phones to track their baby's every movement; the beard bib Fixes a problem that could be solved if men would just clean up after themselves; and the ticket fixing app made no money. As a side note, I'm an attorney who ( in addition to other work) helps clients fight moving violation tickets. In those kinds of cases (at least in my state) an error on the face of the ticket isn't a defense at all, so the app wouldn't really do much for those. They should stick to their not-so-lucrative parking tickets.

Edited January 16, 2016 by marny

[Guatemama3641]

I laughed throughout the beard bib bit - those folks were a hoot. I don't know how much of a market there is for that, so it will be interesting to see what "Queen Lori" comes up with.

Speaking of Lori - I happened to notice that she was on QVC, hawking a fold-out cosmetic case (a variant of her fold-out jewelry case, I guess), which really did look useful.

I saw the beard bib thing in a couple catalogs before Christmas. It seemed like in those instances it was e ing presented as more of a novelty gift. The people were hilarious.

As for Lori and her make up holder thing, it is great! I have one I watch a ton of QVC when I'm in the states. As much as I try to avoid her when she is on air, I have to say it is a great product.

Overall, the episode was kind of forgettable. I was sick of Uber guy. The pitches all just kind of blend together.

[Primetimer]

Everybody's like Uber, beard kings, apps fighting parking tickets, scholarships, baby scales, Lori with a gold crown -- we don't care, we aren't caught up in this show that aired.

Read the story

[feedee]

V8 was nice to let the Village Scholarship siblings use their logo.

[Auntie Anxiety]

After one minute with those Hatch parents, I would have said "I'm out."  How about "inventing" a device that gets parents to have some common sense and a little bit of self-confidence.  What a waste of money.  Maybe I should rent myself out as a grandmother type whom new parents can call whenever they feel the need for reassurance and I would also be willing to kick their asses to make them stop thinking they need to do everything absolutely perfectly or else they will damage their baby forever and ever.  

 

And since it really is something only first time parent would consider buying (and then using for two weeks), I can only hope you'd have room in the closet next to the never-used bread machine, soda streamer and waffle maker that you so desperately needed.

[Gregg247]

So, Chris Sacca worked at Google.  So, he left and became rich on his own.  So, he invested some money is some company whose name I can't quite remember right now. So, now he and his singing-cowboy-shirts show up on Shark Tank.  So, he watches 4 of the worst products featured on ST in quite some time.  So, he likes the baby monitor thing.

 

So, So, So, So,.......

 

Uber, Uber, Uber,...........

[bilgistic]

V8 was nice to let the Village Scholarship siblings use their logo.

I couldn't focus on what the presenters were saying because of that utterly amateur logo that someone's nephew cooked up in five minutes. The Papyrus font needs to die already, right after Comic Sans.

[Auntie Anxiety]

This just occurred to me regarding the baby scale:

Most mothers feed their newborn infants because the baby is crying and they want the kid to go back to sleep. So why the hell would you feed your baby, have the kid fall asleep while nursing it, then put the baby on the scale so you can weigh him/her and gamble that the kid won't wake up by first being placed on the scale, then picked up, then put down again in a crib? After that happens twice, the scale no longer gets used. Parents should take that $300 and put it in their child's education fund. Gah, this is such a .0001% problem.

ETA: I am spending far too much time thinking about it, but how do you account for a dirty diaper or a clothing change? Yes, I am sure you can remove the diaper/clothing and weigh it, then subtract to get the difference; the scale is very sensitive so any clothing change would skew the numbers, amount of pee or poop varies every diaper change. If you consider all the permutations and combinations, it can make your head ache. How has humankind lived without this scale for all these thousands of years?

Edited January 16, 2016 by Auntie Anxiety

[hoosiermommy]

The Hatch baby lady said her estimate of 20,000 units was just 1/10th of 1% of the changing pad market....except this isn't competing with a $20 changing pad. No one is going to walk into a Babies RUs for a $20 changing pad and see this and say, "oh, let's take this one that costs 15 times more!"<br /><br />Or, "I could have this convertible crib that will grow with m child for years, or this changing pad that will give me 2 weeks of use. Hatch Baby pad it is!"

Also, Chris Sacca, shut up. Most people in this country don't live in big cities within walking distance to public transportation. Cars are not dying out you blow hard.

[starri]

Also, yes, owning a car is expensive in a big city. However, there's this service that I use once in a while that you can use to summon a car. It's great, but they like to sock you with extra charges when use is heavy, like when it's raining or on holidays. I can't think of the name.

You know, in about ten years of being a man possessing a beard, I've never once exasperated a woman with my leaving unsightly hair in the sink. Probably because I trim it into a plastic bag.

[bilgistic]

That was my thinking. There's this other invention called a towel. Trim your whatever, then take the towel outside to shake it out.

[me5671]

Fixed parking ticket app: Wow, I hated everything about this pitch.  I hated the guy, I hated the concept, I hated the valuation, I hated the prospects for future business.  I can't believe Mark invested in this garbage!  There's no way that it grows as fast as the pitcher said it would.  Even if it were to somehow start making that kind of money, the government will step in and regulate it to death.  I think Mark just threw away his money on this one.

 

Hatch Baby Scale: Interesting concept, but the price of the product is pretty high.  I'm surprised they got a deal without at least a few sales proving that customers will buy this thing for that price.  The investor MIGHT make a lot of money investing in this, but there's a much larger probability that he doesn't.  Good thing he has Uber to fall back on!

 

College Scholarship: This was just a dumb idea.  Not surprised they didn't get a deal.

 

Beard King:  Eh, it's a good idea and it seems to be working for them.  I personally have no interest in it though.  I wish them the best.

[Auntie Anxiety]

Gee, I imagine Uber drivers would be lining up to drive me and my big, wet, muddy dog around after a walk in the woods and then be happy to take my trash to the dump.

I laughed out loud when Sacca was bemoaning the loss of revenues that cities and towns would suffer from getting parking tickets fixed and Mark Cuban counter punching about how Sacca doesn't seem to mind all those sales/excise taxes, license renewal fees, etc. being lost because of the likes of Uber. And since the government is so careful about how it spends our money, Chris, let's just give them more. Sacca is such a limousine liberal (no pun intended). Hey, if you are so concerned about the loss of revenue, Chris, no one is stopping you from paying extra taxes. Yeah, didn't think you'd be too interested in that. Nothing I can't stand more than a self-righteous hypocrite.

[theatremouse]

The ticket dude annoyed the crap out of me because, depending on where you live, the whole thing he said about "oh they didn't fill in this one thing and now it's thrown out" is not remotely guaranteed to work. It's often the judge's discretion and it's an urban myth that it "has to" be dismissed for shit like that. In some cases, instead they'll be all "oh good point, it's not an Acura; here fixed that for you; here's an amended ticket, pay up." Even in those places where that might actually be a consistent way to get dismissed, were this app to be overly successful in more markets, and were it not to get regulated out of existence, what would happen is traffic cops who maybe are allowed to be somewhat careless in how they fill things out with instead be told to crack down and be more careful. And I know, yeah sure, some people still won't, but basically if he's banking on lax workers resulting is dismissals on technicalities, I think the result of that is not "everyone continues to get off on technicalities" but rather the loopholes get closed so those techniques for dismissal no longer work. His whole 5% (people on their own) vs 20-30% (his app) success rate will only go down specifically as a result of his success. So yeah sure if his goal is to make sure it becomes harder to get parking tickets dismissed, but he thinks he can make enough money in the interim before that happens to get in, get out and be richer for it...yeah sure. Great idea.

Edited January 16, 2016 by theatremouse

[starri]

It would be really great if they could avoid having Chris back for the rest of the season.  Or maybe we want him to, because he can always mention again how he failed to invest in AirBNB and then somebody would finally get Bingo.

[shksabelle]

what a parade of entitlement

 

1.  I'm so entitled that I need an app to get me out of feeling the consequences when i break the law

2.  I'm so entitled that i need a very, very special diaper pad so i can monitor my special snowflake's intake every five minutes so i can pat my self on the back when i take my snowflake to Mommy and Me in his/her $500 (minimum!) stroller

3.  I'm so entitled, i need a place where i can display my wonderfulness so people will give me money for my college education

4.  I'm so entitled that i can't be bothered to put t towel over the sink to catch my beard trimmings

 

This is what the once resilient. self-sufficient citizens of this country have spawned.  Heaven help us!

[Amarsir]

Parents should take that $300 and put it in their child's education fund.

$276. You can't simply save $300 for your relative's college fund. You have to give 8% to an app for some reason.

[AuntieDiane6]

 

I'm so entitled that i need a very, very special diaper pad so i can monitor my special snowflake's intake every five minutes so i can pat my self on the back when i take my snowflake to Mommy and Me in his/her $500 (minimum!) stroller

 

Maybe I am just cynical from watching the last season of Breaking Bad, but this scale is probably meant for drug dealers... excuse me, medical marijuana producers.

[Auntie Anxiety]

 

Maybe I am just cynical from watching the last season of Breaking Bad, but this scale is probably meant for drug dealers... excuse me, medical marijuana producers.

If it's a legal operation, dealers could even write it off as a business expense.

 

The woman and her husband can change their company name from Hatch to Batch and sell it to aspiring Jesse Pinkmans.

Edited January 17, 2016 by Auntie Anxiety

[LADreamr]

It would be really great if they could avoid having Chris back for the rest of the season. Or maybe we want him to, because he can always mention again how he failed to invest in AirBNB and then somebody would finally get Bingo.

Shark Tank Bingo is an awesome idea that needs to happen now. I wonder if I could get Chris to go in on the cost of the app with me. Since he was so wise to go in early on Lyft. I mean, Uber.

[nlkm9]

the uber mentions were still not as obnoxious as the other guest shark who mentioned GOPRO 5 zillion times. it is obnoxious...

[Quickbeam]

I spent most of my career as a pediatric nurse. We weighed everything....in and out. However that was for clinically distressed kids. Imagine how over the top these people get if they start out weighing every feed!

It really bugged me that the baby weigh people never told the end of the story about their daughter. Was mom just psycho?

[bilgistic]

Yes.

[LittleIggy]

It really bugged me that the baby weigh people never told the end of the story about their daughter. Was mom just psycho?

Hey, at least her eyes weren't bugging out and she was fully dressed! :-D

[guilfoyleatpp]

I can totally see moms using Hatch. It's one of those things. Wifi video baby monitors, SIDS detecting sleep pads for cribs, wet wipe warmers, so of course you need a changing table that you can weigh your kid before and after breastfeeding. I was a minimalist first time mom, but if someone had given me one of those I would have totally used it.

 

And I know several other mommies who have had to go to the doctors office to have the pre and post breastfeeding weight to ensure their child is getting enough breastmilk. 

 

And the ticket guy - absolutely no surprise that he was from San Francisco. I lived there for two decades and the parking enforcement there is pretty incredible.  Of course, because it's a huge revenue driver for the city and tickets are ridiculously high. You can get an idea here. But neighborhood parking limits (2 hours without a permit) are strictly enforced. Neighborhood parking permits aren't cheap, either. There were tales of parking enforcement being out there with a ruler (you can't be more than 18 inches from the curb), so many hills mean that if your wheels aren't curbed properly, you get a ticket. It's a huge racket and if you aren't very very careful, it gets very expensive very quickly. I see why people would give it a try.

 

 

[readster]

 

And the ticket guy - absolutely no surprise that he was from San Francisco. I lived there for two decades and the parking enforcement there is pretty incredible.  Of course, because it's a huge revenue driver for the city and tickets are ridiculously high. You can get an idea here. But neighborhood parking limits (2 hours without a permit) are strictly enforced. Neighborhood parking permits aren't cheap, either. There were tales of parking enforcement being out there with a ruler (you can't be more than 18 inches from the curb), so many hills mean that if your wheels aren't curbed properly, you get a ticket. It's a huge racket and if you aren't very very careful, it gets very expensive very quickly. I see why people would give it a try.

 

 I know, I had family that lived in SF for almost twenty years and the stories I would hear. Especially, when my cousins started driving. My one cousin said, he literally was in an out of his car less than 2 minutes to drop off a bill and there was a ticket being written because of him being in correct from the curb as he came out. Its been a joke for years, if you go to SF, you will get a ticket by blinking. I am also tired of hearing "uber" not to mention most ABC shows use it constantly. There were three straight weeks of: Modern Family, Black-ish and even Castle where "uber" was said almost every ten minutes. I was like: "We get it!" "I do live in the current times, shut up!" 

[theatremouse]

It also pissed me off how he kept saying "car ownership will go away" because of uber, and I'm like, you better hope not or you'll have no drivers. I get that he was partly referring to autonomous cars but I think we're still well away from that being the majority. Sure eventually maybe car owning will be more of an enthusiast thing and everyone will have a subcription service to shuttle them around in an autonomous vehicle that never needs to park because it's always on the way to pick up someone else, but...not in the next 10 years, dude. He was thinking super long term with that remark which made it sound disingenuous, or stupid, and I can't decide which. There are better reasons to reject ticket app dude besides "autonomous cars are coming and no one will ever park again". This business will have folded by the time that day comes.

Edited January 17, 2016 by theatremouse

[Mountainair]

Yea, I can see the changing pad thing being useful for the first few weeks while you get the hang of nursing but after that I don't see the point.

I'm a soon to be third time mom finding myself having to purchase new baby gear this time around because the first kid was so long ago that some items stopped working or just got used too much to want to re use for a third time around (and most things were hand me downs so by the time my middle child got them they were already on their fourth of fifth baby). So many items geared towards parents are purely playing on their fears and are making huge money off of it. This changing pad being one such item. I was looking at monitors and came across the Angel Care monitor that helps detects SIDS and the reviewers said that it gave off a lot of false alarms. An alarm would sound indicating the child hasn't moved in such and such amount of time thus causing the parents the freak out. Yea, I managed just fine with my other children without this product and why cause myself to have a heart attack in the middle of the night for no reason?

New parents with money will buy just about anything if the reviews are good enough regardless of price. Thank god I didn't have much money when I had my first or who knows what I would have purchased. The third time around, I'm financially able to buy what I want but I'm also a lot more practical about what my baby needs, the changing pad isn't one of them.

[bilgistic]

There are plenty of people like me who still like cars that aren't rolling computers, but are mechanical machines that can be serviced and run forever. New generations adopt that affection when they work on vehicles with their elders.

[Jamoche]

It's also not that hard to contest a San Francisco parking ticket if there's a legit mistake or even the chance of one. I was driving a dealer loaner with a custom plate that was [dealername]41 and got a ticket from SF on a day I was nowhere near it - two days before Christmas I'm not driving *anywhere*, and sure as hell not parking near Market!

 

I wrote back that there were at least 40 other cars in the Bay Area with the same prefix, they didn't list the make or model much less the VIN, so they couldn't prove which car it was but it wasn't mine. It got dismissed without any further discussion.

[PepperMonkey]

Can Chris Sacca just call an uber vehicle and uber out of the tank never to come back again even if it's an uber centric episode? I'm probably a minority of one, but I like GoPro guy better than this guy, and I took up for him last time he was on. At least GoPro guy is kind of cute. If they're going to replace a shark though, I'm team Ashton and I've never liked anything he's done as an actor. He was great as fill in shark on the tank, though. I just hope Daymond's not thinking of leaving. I'd be sad.

 

Mark kills me with his faux anarchy: I love billionaires who are on the side of the socially disenfranchised because they can relate to them so well.

 

This week was kind of ho hum. Hoping they get some better pitches going and soon.

[Diana Berry]

I think it's just the 300 price tag. Yes, it may be nice for ones that are distressed but then wouldn't you be going to your pediatrician to have them monitor it?

[seacliffsal]

If cities ended up losing too much revenue due to parking tickets being dismissed, they would raise other taxes or fees to make up the revenue deficiency. So, those who follow parking restrictions and don't get tickets would end up paying more in fees due to people with parking violations getting out of the tickets. Oh well (and yes, I realize there are mistakes and errors).

[bilgistic]

Something they mentioned is that people who can't afford tickets are the ones getting them, and I think that got lost in the chaos and has maybe been forgotten here. As mentioned on the show, people with money to spare will regularly park in a garage/deck, which will run $20+ for a couple hours in my large Southern U.S. city. A meter is a couple bucks for the same timeframe. I have no moral objection to someone challenging a technicality on a ticket especially when they can't afford to park in a garage. The person who can afford the garage would have an attorney fighting their ticket. How is an app (with researchers behind it) any different?

Edited January 18, 2016 by bilgistic

[LAgator77]

So last summer I walked to Target on my lunch break to get my dad a birthday card. On my way back I noticed this sticker on a utility pole that said "Beard King" with a bearded king on it. Stickers as street art is a "thing" in LA and my dad has a beard, so I thought it'd be funny to peel off the sticker and send it with my dad's card. My dad thought it was cool and I told him he now has a piece of street art from LA. At no point did it ever occur to us that this was advertising for a business. So as far as viral marketing goes, I think they failed on the marketing part...

[theatremouse]

I'd say debateable. You assumed it was street art, but also spread it. Theoretically, seeing it, sharing it increases the likelihood someone googles it to find out what the hell it is.

[Ottis]

No markings on breast milk - I guess that's why she kept stressing it. I have to admit, I didn't under stand the whole point about measuring the baby in order to measure the milk - don't you just feed until the baby stops?

 

 

There seemed to be bit of a breastfeeding nazi agenda going on there. We both saw this segment and said if breast milk runs out and baby is still hungry, make a bottle. But nary a word was said about that during the show.

 

Agree with the post above about entitlement. And I was disappointed that no one raised the ethical issue of contesting tickets in the hope of getting off on a technicality - if you actually did the crime.

[Yokosmom]

Also, Chris Sacca, shut up. Most people in this country don't live in big cities within walking distance to public transportation. Cars are not dying out you blow hard.

 

I wanted to say this, but you beat me to it. Outside of the largest metropolitan areas, cars are a necessity and are not dying out.  Way to be SF-centric.