“Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban invests $300,000 for 10% stake in Remento
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During last week’s episode of “Shark Tank,” Remento founder Charlie Greene pitched the company’s heartfelt story and service, bringing tears to the eyes of the celebrity sharks. Kevin O’Leary and Daniel Lubetzky teamed up to offer $300,000 for 20% equity. Ultimately, Greene accepted Mark Cuban’s offer of $300,000 for 10% equity.
Remento is an AI-based story-writing app that sends weekly prompts to make it easier to record memories with photos. Additionally, it converts recordings into text and compiles them into a beautiful hardcover, color-printed book. The book includes a QR code feature that lets users watch recorded memories by scanning the code. The base price for the Remento service is $99 with a one-year subscription, and the average order value is $119 with an 86% profit margin. Remento was founded in 2020, and after an early pivot away from in-person oral conversations to an AI-powered app based business, the business is projecting $1.5 million in sales by the end of 2024. For 2025, he expects sales to reach $4.6 million.
While sharing his story, Greene mentioned that he lost his father in the 9/11 terror attack on his 10th birthday. He wanted to preserve his father’s legacy but couldn’t do so. Later, his mother was diagnosed with Stage 3 lung cancer, and he didn’t want to miss the opportunity to record her story. (She is now in remission.) This began his desire to create a service to capture family memories before it’s too late.
Watch the episode on Vimeo here or on Hulu here.
Let’s hope Remento fares better than previous photo-focused “Shark Tank” startups like GrooveBook (which was purchased by Shutterfly, integrated into the company, and then later abandoned) and Flag, a free prints service that was mocked. At that time, billionaire guest shark Chris Sacca said of Flag: “I don’t usually invest in businesses that are doing old school ads with a weak business model in crowded markets with a five-alarm cash burn … And this time is no different. I am out.” In 2014, the app GrooveBook not only secured a $150,000 investment from O’Leary and Cuban, but the business was also soon acquired for $14.5 million by Shutterfly. At the time, the acquisition was seen as a victory for the show, because few “Shark Tank” alums get acquired.
In January, Greene was a guest on the Dead Pixels Society podcast; hear his story below: