Whatever Happened To Pearachute After Shark Tank?
With life and schedules as hectic as they are nowadays, it can be difficult for families to find a service that works in their favor. However, one plucky entrepreneur might have the solution they are looking for. Desiree Vargas Wrigley is the founder and CEO of Pearachute, a subscription service that allows parents to find special discounts for local activities. What makes the service especially valuable for busy families are that if scheduling conflicts arise, parents have the ability to drop out of the activity up to an hour before it begins, whereas other services don't allow for cancellations, especially in such a small window of time. Costing $79 a month for five classes or $99 for unlimited classes, the service has a variety of activities available depending on the child's personal preferences.
Wrigley took the dive into the "Shark Tank" for Episode 7, Season 9, where she came looking for an offer for $500,000 for a 6% stake in the company. At this point, her business had only been running for four months and had made $50,000. However, with the business only being situated in Chicago, she hoped to expand to more cities. When some of the sharks questioned how she planned to do this, she found it hard to articulate and the majority of them go out. Mark Cuban took a chance on her, giving her the $500,000 for 15% of the business, to which she gladly accepted. Since then, has Pearachute been staying fresh?
Pearachute and Mark Cuban split ways
Many times following "Shark Tank," entrepreneurs and investors will see their partnership fall through. In fact, a Forbes study found that 43% of people who got deals on the show did not have their offer go through. It's usually hard to find any concrete reason as to why both parties chose not to stick together, but this is not the case with Pearachute.
According to an interview with the Chicago Tribune, the deal made between founder Desiree Vargas Wrigley and investor Mark Cuban dropped long before the "Tank" episode aired in November 2017. "The terms were terrible," she says. "There was a lot of back-and-forth over what ultimately wasn't that big of a check from his team."
Pearachute has gone quiet after Shark Tank
Despite being upset by the terms, Wrigley could understand where Cuban was coming from as an investor. With the relative youth of the company at the time, she understands that Cuban might have been uncomfortable with the terms laid out. Nevertheless, she sees it as a good thing, saying that, "I'm really glad we didn't end up taking the deal because we're worth a lot more as a company now."
Since then, Pearachute, despite collecting 15 investors (via Crunchbase), seeing a successful crowdfunding campaign, and expanding to other cities and being worth $2 million (via Insider Growth), hasn't seemed especially active in recent years. Their Facebook and Twitter accounts have not posted in some time and their website is not functioning.