Good Morning Inventors! I wanted to start this group not just to help people but to connect people with the reality of inventions and inventing. Last year, we submitted our 5-MinutePetBath invention to the popular show SHARK TANK. Out of 40,000 submissions, we made it to the final selection round (under 100), where I unfortunately did not make the final cut. Last night, my biggest rival product, which is not exactly in our pet market space but has lots of overlap, called the Rinseroo appeared on the show. Worse for me, not only did it do well, but it got a golden ticket from one of the sharks. Insult to injury... Her numbers from the show summarized: - 2019 - $1M Revenue - 2025 Projected - $5M Revenue - Landed COGS$2.50-$4.50 - Retail $15.99 - $19.95 (This is a lie; she's $24.99 on most Amazon listings) - Cost to acquire $2.50 - ROAS (Revenue/Ad spend) Claim 10% -- (THIS IS A LIE! The best we have ever seen is 6%) - Total profit is $1M from start. They did not discuss (on the show): - Her MASSIVE return rate (She's 10%+, That's 500K off revenue!) - Her horrible reviews (2.3 - 3.8 Stars) - Says she's a minority owned business. 🤔 There are several ways to look at this. I could be a salty crybaby, complain about details and make excuses as to why she, with over $5M in revenue, even belongs on SHARK TANK, or I could look at it differently. Here is what it says to me: - This validates that my market space is HUGE. I am in the right market with lots of room. - My product is still VERY different; I am still solving a different problem than hers. - The sharks LOVED the bathing attachment space. - She's got nice base numbers but she's not keeping much in profit. - She has not addressed the core issues with her product (durability, quality complaints are rampant). - I know her numbers, her plan, and what she's doing. She knows nothing about me. This is nothing but motivation to continue, but some would see it as a reason to quit. It's times like these you need to dig deep, ignore the details of SEO this, margin that, and go...