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The first entrepreneur into the Shark Tank this week was presenting her business Toymail and was seeking $250k in exchange for 2.5% of the business. She has developed a line of plush toys that contain a wifi voice messaging system. It allows kids to easily send messages to approved family & friends through their app.

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As for the numbers, they retail for $50 and cost $20 to make. One of her investors is Amazon, who has invested $500k at a $10Mill cap. In all, she has raised $1.6Mill at that $10Mill cap. She also projects that the business will be at $2.5Mill in sales next year.

Now, before we go any further, I need to explain the product a bit more than I was able to in my brief intro description above! Not only does this toy send messages, it also responds to physical play and is expandable into songs, games, and educational content. The tech is also easily removable so that the skin can be changed to match a child’s changing interests. I felt like this needed to be covered, because my thoughts on this product primarily center around the possibilities apart from messaging.

This product screams “licensed content!” Mark touched on this slightly when he made his offer. He wanted her to allow him the space to bring content he has access to into her tech. He didn’t get into much detail on this request, but my imagination started to go wild. The versatility of her tech, along with the ability to change the toy’s skin creates an infinite world of possibilities. Imagine adding an educational module in the voice of a beloved children’s character as an additional in-app purchase. Then they can sell the skin of that character in their online store or through big-box retail. That’s just the simplest and most obvious application for licensed content with this product. She has basically created a blank slate with this tech that can be expanded upon in so many ways.

I don’t want to sit around all day pitching ideas for this product, but I just thought of one more application that would be interesting, if possible! I am not sure how accurate or directional the motion sensors are in her tech, but it would be interesting to see the toy connect as a controller to a tablet and be used to play simple kids games.

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Anyway, I know I am getting away from the application that this tech is actually being used for today, but it’s the future possibilities that get me really excited! Their mission with voice messaging is definitely excellent and interesting, but speculating about how this kind of platform could be expanded is just fun! I also feel free to speculate wildly because the entrepreneur behind this product is the real deal! This is her second big product, with the first being the crazy viral Clocky, which raked in $10Mill in sales! She is also an MIT graduate, and the way she has already started to build this business shows a distinct understanding and aptitude for this kind of work!

After a lot of back and forth, she finally got a deal with Chris and Lori at $600k in exchange for 5% of the business. This is pretty impressive considering that she walked in with a $10Mill valuation and walked out with a $12Mill valuation. This is even after Chris said that he was uncomfortable with the valuation because he felt it was too high! This is just another example to show that this entrepreneur knows what she’s doing!

So good luck to Toymail! I will be following your brand with immense interest to see how you develop, expand, and improve your tech!

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