Whatever Happened To Swimply After Shark Tank?
Long ago, in the era before there was an app to solve every problem, you had to know someone with a swimming pool if you wanted to beat the heat and didn't have one of your own. Thankfully, now there is Swimply, an app that is essentially Airbnb but for renting private swimming pools by the hour.
The hotter the temperature is where you are right now, the better that idea sounds, but unfortunately, the studio where "Shark Tank" is filmed seems to be very comfortably air-conditioned. When Swimply founder Bunim Laskin went on the show during a Season 11 episode asking for a $300,000 investment in exchange for a 5% stake, none of the sharks bit at his idea (the fact that they're all wealthy individuals with no shortage of swimming pools between them probably didn't help).
But as with many other products that didn't manage to close a deal with the Sharks, Swimply has had a fairly successful afterlife owing at least in part to its exposure on the show. And depending on where you are, you can use Swimply now to rent not just swimming pools, but basketball, tennis, and pickleball courts too.
Swimply blossomed during COVID-era public pool restrictions
Bunim Laskin founded Swimply back in 2018, but Laskin got an unexpected and grim bit of good business fortune when the "Shark Tank" episode that featured the app aired in March of 2020. Obviously, that was around the time the COVID-19 pandemic was ramping up, and public swimming was pretty much a non-starter in many parts of the world.
Whether it was from people jonesing for a swim in the wake of local lockdowns or exposure on "Shark Tank," TechCrunch reported that Swimply revenue saw an atomic 4,000% spike in 2020, which led to a new round of funding without the aid of any of the Sharks. Might they regret their decision to pass on what ended up growing into a successful company? It's possible, although Swimply has run into a few difficulties since its "Shark Tank" appearance as well. This CNN article reports problems with scammers "renting out" pools that don't actually belong to them. And in 2021, lawmakers in Wisconsin reportedly attempted to impose license regulations on homeowners offering their pools for rent (but they later backed off).
In any case, Swimply appears to be going strong now, even if the Sharks of "Shark Tank" opted not to swim in its unexplored waters. And the promotional dynamite known as "the 'Shark Tank' effect" notches another success story in its column.