Stasis in the Shark Tank : Persuading an Audience of Funders to Act on Behalf of Entrepreneurs

Abstract

This study investigates the role of stasis, an ancient rhetorical tool with both heuristic and analytic capabilities, in entrepreneurial rhetoric, specifically in pitching and question-and-answer sessions. Drawing from a multiyear sample of Shark Tank pitches, the author found that funders expect entrepreneurs to account for stases of being, quality, quantity, and place. The findings suggest a series of associated questions within each stasis. When these questions are answered unsuccessfully, standstills occur within the funding argument; when they are successfully addressed, the stasis passes, and ventures are more likely to receive funding. The author discusses the implications of this study for entrepreneurship and professional communication.

Keywords

entrepreneurial rhetoric stasis audience pitch funders

A potential investor’s choice to either give or withhold the financial backing that an entrepreneur needs to pursue a venture often serves as the pivotal point in the life cycle of a new business. While entrepreneurs pursue widely varied funding sources, including venture capitalists, angel investors, incubators, and accelerators, pitch contests also present a viable funding source (Smith & Viceisza, 2018). Within this context, the pitch often leads into questions and answers (Q&A), with the Q&A either clarifying and solidifying the judges’ choices to invest or moving them to disengage. Studies of entrepreneurs’ pitch-making processes have led to a better understanding of the pitch itself as a genre. For example, linguistic features of entrepreneurs’ pitches have received scholarly attention (Moreau, 2018), as have the revisions entrepreneurs make to their pitches (Spinuzzi et al., 2014). Recently, researchers have also investigated the role of gesturing and figurative language in obtaining funding (J. S. Clarke et al., 2019). But as J. S. Clarke et al. (2019) indicated, communication is a “joint activity between entrepreneurs and investors” (p. 356), and investors and funders merit closer examination as well. Specifically, the funders act as engaged audience members, and the ways that they engage and disengage during pitches and Q&A remain largely unexamined. To these ends, this study examines the rhetorical role of funders within the pitch setting.

Funders employ specific verbal strategies when choosing whether to disengage from a pitch or to make an offer. Careful scrutiny of these kairotic moments of response might aid entrepreneurs as they seek to move funders from “no” to “yes.” Analyzing potential funders’ responses and the rhetorical foundations behind them might also facilitate a deeper understanding of entrepreneurial rhetoric for both scholars and practitioners within the fields of professional communication and entrepreneurship. In particular, this study explores the role of stasis as part of the funding offers made in response to entrepreneurs’ pitches and seeks to identify where stasiatic failures occur within postpitch negotiations and responses. Stasis, an ancient rhetorical concept roughly translated as “standstill” or “rest,” provides a key lens for analyzing potential funders’ response to pitches. As Spinuzzi (2017) has observed, “In all of its forms, entrepreneurship involves rhetoric. This aspect has been explored in the entrepreneurship literature, but lightly and often not by name” (p. 277). By framing the potential investors from a rhetorical perspective as engaged audience members participating in a series of stasiatic deliberations, I offer a new lens for analysis of entrepreneurial rhetoric, a new application for rhetoricians interested in stasis theory, and heuristic tools for entrepreneurs and professional communicators preparing to face such fund-seeking situations. These heuristics should also prove useful for business and professional communication instructors as they prepare entrepreneurially minded students for the workplace. In the following sections, I explain the study’s context and provide an overview of the extant literature from rhetoric and entrepreneurship. Then I share my methodology and discuss the study’s findings.

Study Context

Because it features the entrepreneurial pitch as its central genre, Shark Tank (Burnett et al., 2009–present), a television series created in 2009 by producer Mark Burnett, provided the study context. This award-winning reality show, now beyond its 200th episode, uses a highly competitive application process to select entrepreneurs to appear on the show. In Season 6, for instance, 100,000 businesses applied to appear; only 120 were actually televised (Entis, 2015). In each episode, four or five entrepreneurs pitch their businesses to five sharks, a group of multimillionaire and billionaire investors. Following the pitch, the sharks ask questions and either make offers or decline to invest in the opportunities presented. The sharks are real investors, and many businesses have succeeded because of partnerships with the sharks that were created through the show.

The show, which bills itself as having “reinvigorated entrepreneurship in America,” claims to be unscripted (ABC, 2019) although the authenticity of the show experience in relationship to real entrepreneurship has occasionally been called into question (Screeny, 2018), particularly because the entrepreneurs’ pitches and the interaction between the entrepreneurs and the sharks are often heavily edited to fit the show’s time frame. The show’s selection processes at times appear based on the desire to create television-worthy drama. Additionally, actual contracts are not signed on-screen; deals might change significantly or even be voided after the show. Despite these limitations, Shark Tank appears to have sparked great interest in entrepreneurship among the viewing public and scholars, and it has garnered many awards, including multiple Emmys. Entrepreneurship had already been experiencing unprecedented growth as an academic discipline (Kuratko & Morris, 2018), and with the launch of Shark Tank, the creation of new academic programs and majors has continued to flourish, likely in part due to the public’s heightened interested in this area. Not only has Shark Tank received scholarly attention in the field of entrepreneurship (Ciuchta et al., 2018; Pollack et al., 2012; Smith & Viceisza, 2018; Ward, 2015), it has also received such attention in fields as diverse as business education (Moy, 2014) and gender and legal studies (Keren, 2016).

The show has provided several key assets to the research process. Pitches on the show come from a vast array of business types, offering potential for greater generalizability due to the breadth of the data set. As the highest stakes pitch contest in the United States (Smith & Viceisza, 2018), Shark Tank is exceptionally competitive, creating the opportunity for viewers to see high-quality pitches, especially as the seasons have progressed. Also, this publicly available, widely watched show has likely shaped pitching behavior because many would-be entrepreneurs watch the show as one tool for learning about the genre. This potential for shaping pitching behavior might further contribute to the generalizability of the findings from the show’s context to other pitching situations. Finally, the public availability of the show allows others to check research findings against data from the show itself as a ready means of assessing internal validity.

Literature Review

Scholarship relevant to this study comes from both rhetoric and entrepreneurship. I start by reviewing literature on stasis theory from the field of rhetoric and then move into literature on entrepreneurship, particularly entrepreneurial rhetoric, including the relevant work on Shark Tank.

The Rhetorical Foundations of Stasis

Stasis can be used to systematically categorize and analyze decision points in contemporary argumentation, but its conceptual and linguistic roots can be traced back to the Greeks. In its linguistic origins, stasis is roughly equivalent to the English nouns “standstill” and “rest.” As Aristotle’s Physics suggests, stasis is “that which disrupts or severs motion and robs it of its continuity” (quoted in Dieter, 1950, p. 349). Motion broken by stasis is not one movement but rather two segments within a larger process. Stasis, however, belongs to neither movement but resides in between and, as such, can be thought of as a point or moment of change between contraries or potentially as a significant transitional moment within an ongoing process.

Cicero and Hermagoras created the stasis system, which significantly expanded the usefulness of the concept of stasis beyond Aristotle’s work and allowed for the categorization of types of stases. Whereas Hermagoras focused on using stasis primarily for identifying judicial proofs, Cicero built a comprehensive approach to rhetorical invention that included stasis and could be applied to moral decision making, philosophical considerations, and practical concerns (Ochs, 1989). In more modern times, Hultzen (1958) suggested that stasis could be used when preparing for argumentation to evaluate where “opposition” might reside. For arguments already in process, Hultzen found that stasis provides opportunities to analyze “the attitudes of the efficient audience systematically to discover where the audience is in doubt, where the critical status at the moment lies, the opposition which must be resolved before the deliberative process can resume movement” (p. 116). Stasis, then, has become a tool for both rhetorical invention and analysis of argumentation.

Four graduated categories within stasis enable its application to various situations, whether in judicial realms, moral decision making, or in daily life. Although scholars (Brizee, 2008; Carter, 1988; Dieter, 1950) have differed in how they name the categories, or levels, the essence of each is fairly stable. The first level is fact, being, or conjecture; the second level refers to either definition or quantity; the third level relates to the quality or intensity of the issue; and the fourth relates to the place or jurisdictional appropriateness of the issue.

Recently, stasis has been reclaimed as a tool for helping rhetors see both the movement and the potential outcomes of arguments. Kock (2011), building from Hermagoras, provided a useful, thorough conceptualization of stasis theory for modern debate that integrates the classical subcategories and clarifies the types of disagreements for which each might best be applied. For practical applications, Carter (1988) argued, stasis serves several purposes: It is “generative, creating an impetus for action” (p. 99), and it serves as both a “doctrine of inquiry” and a “direction for action” (p. 100). Brizee (2008) posited that within workplace settings, stasis is a heuristic strategy useful for resolving team-related challenges. Marsh (2006) proposed that managers should use stasis as an analytic tool in crisis communication settings to determine what level or part of an accusation to attack.

Entrepreneurial Rhetoric and Shark Tank

Although the literature from the entrepreneurship field has not yet incorporated the concept of stasis, other rhetorical principles have made inroads as strategies for understanding varied pitching and funding situations and funders’ responses. Entrepreneurship studies taking rhetorical approaches have focused primarily on metaphors, stories, credibility or ethos, and visual rhetoric. For example, Nicholson and Anderson (2005) investigated metaphors used in the news to describe entrepreneurs. Martens et al. (2007) and O’Connor (2002) studied the use of stories in pitch making. Maxwell and Levesque (2011) looked at trustworthiness as a key factor in whether an entrepreneur received funding; while their focus is not overtly rhetorical, trustworthiness has connections with the rhetorical concept of ethos. J. Clarke (2011) assessed the use of visual symbols by entrepreneurs, finding that entrepreneurs’ use of visual rhetoric to set the scene, show control, and regulate emotion helped persuade others of their venture’s feasibility and viability. J. S. Clarke et al. (2019) scrutinized gestures and figurative language within pitches. Further, Galbraith et al. (2014) posited that entrepreneurs will benefit from incorporating “tonal variety, body movement, and hand gestures” strategically as means to enhance listeners’ perceptions of their “passion and preparedness.” They found that in the case of grant proposal presentations by entrepreneurs, “higher scores for perceived entrepreneurial passion, perceived entrepreneurial preparedness, presentation attention, and presentation attractiveness” (p. 241) improved reviewers’ assessments of the presentations. While Galbraith et al. did not directly reference rhetoric, they analyzed presentation design effects and suggested that these elements can enhance persuasion, which clearly falls within the purview of rhetoric.

Shark Tank has received some scholarly attention within the field of entrepreneurship. For example, Pollack et al. (2012) used Shark Tank to investigate the constructs of preparedness and cognitive legitimacy in pitches. They found a positive relationship between entrepreneurs’ evidence of preparedness and funders’ perceptions of the cognitive legitimacy of these entrepreneurs’ pitches, causing the entrepreneurs to receive a higher amount of funds. Another Shark Tank–based study investigated the sharks’ perceptions of entrepreneurs’ coachability as a means of determining whether the sharks were willing to offer funding (Ciuchta et al., 2018). Within the popular press, columnist Murphy (2014) studied the first five seasons of Shark Tank to identify qualities of successful pitches. He found that the most common predictor of success was an available mass market for the idea. He also explained the importance of having answers to “What customer problem are you solving?” and “Why are you the person to solve it?” He observed that entrepreneurs who lacked those answers or were unable to “articulate basic metrics” about their business were typically doomed to fail on Shark Tank.

In summary, while stasis has a long and storied history in the rhetorical tradition, the field of entrepreneurship is only beginning to embrace rhetorical principles as part of its analytic and creative toolkits. Given that many entrepreneurs’ most significant need in the early stages of their business is to persuade potential funders to come onboard, a greater understanding of entrepreneurial rhetoric would be highly valuable.

Method

This study suggests that savvy, rhetorically sensitive entrepreneurs can plan for and then evaluate in situ the unfolding deliberation surrounding their pitch by using principles of stasis. To examine the pitch genre, I initially collected a corpus of 77 pitches from 18 episodes drawn from three seasons of Shark Tank.¹ I drew episodes from Seasons 1, 4, and 8 to capture changes that have occurred as the show has developed. I selected the first six episodes from Season 1 to capture data from the show at its origin point. This provided data from wherein the contestants had not previously seen the show and thus had not learned from watching prior seasons. In Season 4, the midpoint of the data set, I sampled the broadest subset of episodes by moving across the season to include Episodes 1, 2, 10, 11, 25, and 26. In Season 8, I analyzed Episodes 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22, focusing on the latter half of the season to complement my data from the opening of the show in Season 1. I completed Rounds 1–4 of coding with this data set to refine the codebook. Then I returned to the show in Season 10 for Episode 10, the most recent episode available, as a final check of the refined coding scheme before moving to Round 5 of coding. I incorporated the four pitches from this episode into the overall data set, resulting in a total of 81 pitches from 19 episodes. I watched and transcribed the episodes. Some episodes had rough transcripts created through closed captioning available online that became the starting point for the broad transcriptions I used in this research.

After transcribing all the episodes, I completed five rounds of coding using directed content analysis (DCA; Hsieh & Shannon, 2005), a qualitative method, as the starting point. DCA uses preestablished categories for coding; in this case, the categories came from stasis theory (Dieter, 1950). I then used the constant comparative technique (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) within rounds of coding as a process of technique triangulation (Humble, 2009). In Round 1, I labeled all incidents in which sharks dropped out and made offers using the comment function in Word.

In Round 2, I examined and coded all the questions asked by sharks according to the basic stasis categories established in the literature review. As the coding progressed, the categories evolved somewhat from Dieter’s (1950) stasis categories due to observed differences in the Shark Tank context; for instance, I situated quality as the second category and quantity as the third because sharks often first asked questions about the entrepreneurs’ reasons and motivations for pursuing their business and about their relevant knowledge. They also inquired about the business’s history and whether the entrepreneur had obtained patents. I categorized these types of questions as “being” or conjecture, in that the sharks were assessing what the idea was and who had created it. When the sharks asked questions about the literal workings of items or the structure of the business model, I categorized these within the stasis of “quality.” Sharks also commonly asked questions related to current valuations of the business, the resources needed, and the division of risk and equity between investor and entrepreneur. I labeled these types of questions as “quantity.” The fourth category, “place,” encompassed questions focused on the timing of the business idea, alternatives already available, the level of competition, and the specific market for the idea. In the few cases in which there was some ambiguity between two codes within one phrase, I chose an exclusive coding approach and made a judgment about which one seemed more predominant.

Some sentences did have more than one code although each code was for a separate phrase within the sentence, as in this example from shark Barbara Corcoran: “My biggest concern is not so much your product, but I don’t see you selling this thing.”² In this sentence, the first phrase was coded as quality, and the second phrase was coded as place because the shark does not “see” a market for the item. In Round 3, I coded the reasons that the sharks gave for dropping out. In cases in which the shark cited several concerns just prior to dropping out, I recorded the concern that was most closely associated with the dropout as the reason for the dropout. For instance, during Season 8, Episode 16, shark Daymond John stated, “It’s hard to get the name out. There’s a new superfood every year. I think it’s just a big challenge. I don’t have any interest in this. I’m out.” In this instance, he expressed several concerns about the Peaceful Fruits snack food. My final takeaway was that he did not have a personal interest in the product; accordingly, I coded this dropout as due to a lack of fit. Round 4 focused on axial coding (Strauss, 1987), further building out and further defining question types associated with stasis categories, especially within the context of pitch dropouts. The goal at this point was to increase the theoretical density of the analysis.

After all of these refinements, I tested the coding scheme established in Rounds 1–4 one last time by pulling the most recent Shark Tank episode available—Season 10, Episode 10. The codebook worked satisfactorily in light of this most recent episode, so the research progressed to Round 5, the final round. Using the entire data set, I pulled all shark dropout incidents into Excel, where I delineated the path to dropouts according to particular sharks, their reasons for dropping out, and the incidents in which offers and deals were made. I then compiled individual profiles of the regular sharks’ dropout patterns on the basis of these delineations (see Table 1). Guest sharks were not profiled, due to minimal data.

Table 1.

Coding Process.

Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Round 4	Round 5
Dropout statements and offer statements labeled across entire data set	All questions asked by sharks labeled according to historic stasis categories	Reasons for dropouts labeled according to refined stasis categories	Axial coding to further refine stasis categories used in sharks’ questions and dropouts	Individual sharks profiled: paths to dropouts, offers, and deals delineated

From my analysis and coding, I categorized the kinds of questions that the shark investors asked according to the four levels of stasis that occurred in the pitch setting of the show (see Table 2). While originally intended for rhetorical analysis, this categorization might serve as a heuristic for entrepreneurs and others seeking funding for their programs: Being able to successfully answer each of these questions will likely increase the odds of receiving favorable responses from potential investors and administrators. To fulfill the tenets of replicable, aggregable, and data-driven research (Haswell, 2005), I have shown in the Appendix my coding scheme as it is applied to the transcription of a pitch from Season 1 so that readers can test or apply the scheme for themselves.

Table 2.

Questions Investors Asked Categorized by Stasis.

Being	Quality	Quantity	Place
What is the overall concept (the business, idea, product, service)?	How does the product or service work?	What have the numbers been?	What alternatives already exist?
What are the creator’s characteristics (e.g., motivation, likability, personal history)?	Is the product or service well designed?	What are the financial projections?	Is this the right time for this idea?
What is the story behind the creation of this business?	What need does this product or service address?	What will the money be used to fund? How much money is needed?	Is there a market for the idea? Who would buy it?
How has the business moved to this point (e.g., has the creator gotten a patent)?	Does the business model make sense? How does the business model work strategically?	What is the level of investment risk? How will risk and equity be divided between investor and entrepreneur?	How extensive is the competition in the market?
Does the business have a healthy track record/existence thus far?	What do you see as the future development or next stage within your business model?	How reasonable is the current valuation? How much money is the business actually worth?
What relationships or corporate partnerships have been formed? Is the creator credible?	(Subcategory: Quality of fit) How would this business fit with the investor’s other interests?	What other resources does the entrepreneur want from the investor (time, industry expertise, production, distribution, and marketing)?

Results

In this section, I present the results of this study, providing examples of these findings according to the levels of stasis.

Stasis of Being

Of the 81 pitches I analyzed, 41 led to deals made. During the Q&A segment, the stasis of being often became the starting point for sharks as they asked about the overall concept, the creator’s personal history and credibility in relationship to the business, the story of the business, and the existence of patents. Even when Q&A moved beyond this stasis, shark dropouts related to being often still occurred later in the Q&A segment. In total, failures at this level of stasis led to 50 individual shark dropouts. For example, entrepreneur Todd Miller faltered in credibility when describing his Bodywalking Institute (Season 4, Episode 1). Shark John asked Miller about the history of the business, and he responded with lackluster numbers. Miller attempted to build his credibility by explaining, “As a 20-time ironman triathlete, I would not be here unless it was for bodywalking.” But this approach then backfired as shark Mark Cuban attacked Miller’s credibility by comparing his personal time investment in the business to the amount of time he has invested in training for triathlons. Although sharks Robert Herjavec and John commented that Cuban was being unfair, he dropped out, stating, “I’m not interested in investing in balance. I’m interested in investing in somebody whose sole focus is to be a success at their business. And I don’t see that in you, so I’m out.”

During other pitches, sharks dropped out several times because businesses were too new and did not have a long timeline of successes; they tended to describe the business or the business model as unproven or even “embryonic” (shark Corcoran). Sharks also dropped out when they felt like the entrepreneur had misdirected them. For instance, in Season 4, Episode 25, Corcoran dropped out, stating, “I happen to think that Skype piece is the sex appeal in the whole deal. Creates a lot of confidence. I really thought that was a real deal, like you cornered the Skype space. So I’m out.” In this scenario, Corcoran initially believed that the entrepreneur had a deal with Skype. When she found out that was not truly the case, Corcoran was no longer interested in the business concept. But entrepreneurs who successfully conquer stasis of being still faced significant hurdles through the other stases.

Stasis of Quality

Many entrepreneurs found stasis of quality problematic. Problems occurred related to the sharks’ perceptions of the business model and the quality of the product or service itself. For example, during Season 4, Episode 26, shark Kevin O’Leary criticized the business model of Lugless:

The model kind of reminds me of what happens in the cellular telephone market. A new brand carrier like a Virgin sits on top of the infrastructure of another company and sells for very thin margins. You’re doing the same thing on top of FedEx. I think what happens over time is, maybe you scale, but your margins get crushed. I think that’s the challenge, because anybody can do this. And I’m not saying you won’t as you run for building this brand. I’ve never heard of Lugless. I travel a lot…. If I owned a piece of this company, would push for an airline deal. I’m out.

While O’Leary provided some advice and a small ray of hope, he refused to participate in the business because of other problematic businesses operating on similar models. Other stasis of quality failures occurred related to the quality of the product or service. For instance, shark John commented, “Listen, I have to be honest, but I really just don’t like the jewelry. I’m out.” Overall, the second shark to drop out of a venture typically cited a quality-related concern. In sum, sharks dropped out due to concerns about quality 57 times.

A related subcategory—quality of fit with investors—was highly problematic for many entrepreneurs. In addition to their 57 general quality-related dropouts, sharks dropped out 49 times while citing concerns about the business not fitting well with their other investments or personal interests. For instance, in Season 8, Episode 20, Cuban gave this reason for dropping out:

I believe every word you said. But there’s just no way on God’s green earth I’m gonna be in the cat wine business. Of all the things I could spend my time and money on, no disrespect, I’m just not built for this business.

Thus, the Apollo Peak entrepreneur passed Cuban’s assessment of credibility but was unable to overcome a lack of fit with this shark’s interests. Sharks tended to address concerns about fit early on, dropping out quickly if they felt the business did not match their current interests or portfolio.

Stasis of Quantity

The stasis leading to the most shark dropouts (65 times) was quantity. Often, the first shark to drop out (19 times) did so because of a quantitative reason; however, quantity-related failures merited dropouts throughout the Q&A session. Especially in Season 1, the sharks often disagreed with the entrepreneurs’ valuations of their businesses. In Seasons 4 and 8, about half as many dropouts occurred in relation to quantity. An exchange from Season 1, Episode 4, that occurred between Kevin O’Leary (KO) and Gina Cotroneo (GC) about her business idea, Soul’s Calling, Incorporated, clearly depicts a valuation controversy:

KO:

We have to deal with the numbers. That’s the thing about numbers, they never lie. You told me that I should give you US$150,000 and I would own 25% of your company.

GC:

Correct.

KO:

That means you’re telling me your company is worth, today, 4 times that amount. US$600−600,000.

GC:

US$600,000.

KO:

I’m an investor. I gotta be true to that because I know money has no soul, all right? I never, ever, ever let emotion get in the way of an investment. Your business is not worth US$600,000. Here’s what it’s worth: zero. That’s because it doesn’t make any money. Somebody has to tell you.

While the sharks might be more frank and even hostile than typical angel investors are in how they express their concerns, presenting an accurate valuation proved critical in pitching. During other pitches, sharks often dropped out when entrepreneurs showed a lack of quantitative savvy, as was the case with several of the sharks after Marian Cruz’s Turbobaster pitch in Season 1, Episode 3. The sharks clearly liked her, and she had nearly passed the stasis of being on that note, but then three of the sharks dropped out in back-to-back comments:

KO:

Marian, you’re a nice enough person. You’re cute, you’re bubbly, but you don’t know any of your numbers. You can’t even tell me if I could ever make a profit on this baster. For that reason, I’m out.

GC:

Marian…. I can’t imagine investing in a business where I have no idea what it’s gonna cost you to produce it. So for that reason, I’m out.

Herjavec:

Marian, I’ve cut you way more slack than anybody else, but eventually, I gotta know the numbers. You have no numbers. I’m out.

Although Marian Cruz went on to land offers from both John and Kevin Harrington, her lack of quantitative knowledge of her business idea nearly cost her the opportunity.

Stasis of Place

The fourth stasis category, place, led to 37 dropouts. This stasis included questions about the competition within the market and the timeliness of the idea. In some cases, the sharks simply argued that the market was too crowded or too small. During Season 1, Episode 6, the entrepreneurs attempted to sell flatulence-filtering underwear. They passed the stasis of being for credibility but could not overcome challenges related to the market or place. Herjavec stated, “I think you’ve done a fantastic job for what could have been a very touchy subject, but the market is small. I’m out.” John then followed up, noting, “This is really a supply to a medical house and/or mail order, and so I’m out.”

At times, as a means of testing the concept, the sharks also demonstrated a desire to better understand less familiar markets. During Season 1, Episode 3, the sharks questioned Lori Lite, the owner of Stress Free Kids. Corcoran asked, “Is there real proof out there that children are feeling this kind of stress, that there’s a real market for that?” The entrepreneur then cited a statistic to prove her case: “I think it’s 13 out of 100 children have anxiety disorders.” Although they seemed to accept that statistic, O’Leary continued to test her on this stasis, asking, “Why haven’t you gone to a children’s book publisher and say, ‘Look what I’ve done. I’ve sold 30,000 of these. Give me a deal. I’m a great author'?” By successfully fielding that question, the entrepreneur was able to move the discussion forward beyond that stasis, and she eventually landed a deal with the sharks.

Finally, across the data set, sharks stated “I’m out” 13 times without providing any reason. Table 3 shows the order of dropouts across the entire corpus of pitches, including incidents in which some sharks dropped out, but deals were eventually made by others.

Table 3.

Sequence of Shark Dropouts by Stasis Types.^a

Five Sharks	Being	Quality	Fit (Subcategory)	Quantity	Place
Dropout 1	14	12	15	19	14
Dropout 2	10	20	15	11	8
Dropout 3	11	13	9	16	7
Dropout 4	13	8	4	14	5
Dropout 5	2	4	6	5	3
Total^b	50	57	49	65	37

^aThe chart includes all dropouts, even for cases when some sharks dropped out and others went on to make a deal. Additionally, sharks worked together on some deals. ^bThirteen additional dropouts occurred without the shark giving any reason, and two dropouts occurred when a shark had made an offer contingent on other sharks joining in; that is, the shark extended the offer and then dropped out when others did not join in. These are not included in the chart.

Shark Tank Across the Seasons

Across the multiple episodes³ from Seasons 1, 4, and 8, one of the biggest trends was a reduction in the total number of dropouts. The Season 1 data set had 95 dropouts, Season 4 had 72, and Season 8 had 76. Other trends included a dramatic decrease between Seasons 1 and 4 in quantity-related dropouts. Place-related dropouts also fell after Season 1. Fit-related dropouts, on the other hand, increased from nine dropouts in the Season 1 data to 17 in Season 4 and 16 in Season 8. Several possible reasons might explain the increase in fit-related dropouts. The sharks might have deemed fit a greater priority in the later seasons after they had more experience with the show. Alternately, as contestants’ knowledge of the show increased, they were able to overcome more of the other stases; however, a lack of fit with an individual shark remained insurmountable in certain cases. Overall, all the stases continued to cause problems for some contestants, but as a group, the contestants appeared to become more savvy to the basic objections that sharks tended to make as the seasons progressed.

Individual sharks demonstrated some proclivities toward certain dropout categories. The three sharks most often present across the seasons were O’Leary, Herjavec, and John. O’Leary dropped out first in 19% of the pitches in which he participated.⁴ He was the least likely to drop out across the pitches he attended, dropping out only 53% of the time. By far, his most significant area of concern was quantity (21 times across the 79 pitches he participated in), which was most pronounced in Season 1. Herjavec, who appeared in all but one episode within the data set, also dropped out first 19% of the time. He dropped out most often due to quality concerns, but he was also very concerned about credibility (stasis of being). He dropped out on 62% of the pitches. John’s greatest concern was fit, followed by credibility. He was present for 72 pitches and dropped out on 66%; he was the first to drop out 22% of the time.

Other sharks who participated in a majority of the episodes included Corcoran and Cuban. Corcoran dropped out first 20% of the time. She most often dropped out due to quantity concerns, but she also often dropped out from concerns related to stasis of being. She dropped out on 67% of the 61 pitches she attended. Out of all the sharks, Cuban was most likely to drop out first (25% of his dropouts). In Season 4, he was most likely to drop out due to concerns about credibility. But in the Season 8 episodes, his primary concern related to quality. Overall, he dropped out most often due to concerns about the quality of the business model, followed by concerns about lack of credibility and personal fit. He dropped out on 63% of the 52 pitches he attended.

Finally, Kevin Harrington and Lori Greiner participated in less than half of the pitches within the data set. Harrington’s most frequent dropout reason was quantity, with seven dropouts. He dropped out for quality and place 4 times each. In the 30 pitches he attended, he was first to drop out 13% of the time. Greiner was involved in 28 of the pitches I analyzed; she dropped out first only 7% of the time. Although she rarely dropped out first, she had the highest percentage of dropouts across her pitches (71%). Her greatest concerns related to the stasis of place—she was particularly focused on marketability issues.

Discussion

The stasis of being caused problems for some entrepreneurs, even when the discussion appeared to have progressed to other stases. This appearance of progressing beyond the stasis with it reemerging later as a dealbreaker could stem from several reasons. First, time limitations of the televised portion of Shark Tank could cause this stasis to appear to be successfully resolved even though conversations actually continued offscreen about sharks’ concerns in this area. This is a limitation of using a televised data set that is necessarily abbreviated due to the broadcast context. Nonetheless, most professional communication situations involve some sort of time limitation. For instance, in appointments with busy venture capitalists, entrepreneurs likely face time constraints, rendering this possibility worth considering as a potential concern for entrepreneurs in many contexts. Second, the sharks who dropped out later in the sequence due to stasis of being failures possessed lingering concerns but temporarily withheld their judgment, later returning to the stasis of being as a sticking point after hearing more from the entrepreneur. Third, the stasis of being became an easy excuse for sharks in that they could simply say that they disliked the concept or the person rather than give a more specific reason.

Investors’ concerns related to stasis of being often centered on credibility and even likability. As Cialdini (2009) delineated, likability contributes to the ability to persuade and can be improved by creating positive connections and associations, delivering compliments, working together toward a common goal, and presenting an attractive appearance. In the sharks’ case, they were sometimes willing to cut participants greater slack when they liked them, as several of the sharks did with entrepreneur Cruz in Season 1. But if, and when, the sharks developed antipathy toward an entrepreneur, they were generally quick to find fault. Robert Allison, inventor of the Lifebelt, who appeared in Season 1, Episode 2, struggled in his dealings with the sharks, apparently because they disliked him. His case demonstrates an incomplete resolution of the stasis of being. For example, O’Leary told him, “Robert, I’ll make you an offer. I’ll buy your patent for US$500,000—100% of it. I want to separate you from the patent, and I don’t want you to call me ever again.” Herjavec then followed up with a second offer: “Robert, I’ll make you a better offer. I’ll give you US$1 million for 100% of the patent, and you can call me once.” Although the sharks liked his concept, Allison failed on likability. The offers he did receive came with strict stipulations, and he ended up walking away without a deal. In his closing comments, Herjavec commented that Allison was “unbelievably stubborn” and had a “great idea. Wrong guy.”

Entrepreneurs also encountered resistance if they were perceived as greedy. In response to Jeff Cohen, the Voyage Air Guitar entrepreneur from Season 1, Episode 3, O’Leary lashed out: “I’m stunned by your greed, your absolute greed. You just said that greed—wanting to make money—is what this is all about. You had an opportunity to make money, and you passed on it.” To improve their likability and credibility in order to move beyond the stasis of being, entrepreneurs should avoid appearing greedy and instead consider framing the opportunities as win–win.

Entrepreneurs were able to move beyond the stasis of being many times, especially in later seasons as show participants overall became savvier. They would often bring sharks to the stage and ask them to help with a task involving the business—which fits with Cialdini’s (2009) strategy of working toward a common goal to increase likability. Many brought personalized business-related gifts for each shark to inspire feelings of connection with the business. This strategy of bringing items and getting them into the sharks’ hands also helped entrepreneurs pass the stasis of quality by giving the sharks a real sense of the item and its merits—a strategy known as increasing presence, or “bringing-before-the-eyes” (Newman, 2002). Long (1983) explained the psychology of enacting presence:

The rhetor creates a presence by first analyzing how the audience thinks and acts and then stylistically re-creating the resulting information. The audience adheres to the presence because it fills the audience’s consciousness with its very being. The rhetor then enters into communion with the audience, and, as a result of subsequent argumentative techniques, they act together. (p. 107)

One of these personalized attempts to use presence occurred in Season 4, Episode 2, when the Ecreamery entrepreneurs created custom flavors for each shark. Abby Jordan and Becky App introduced their product to the sharks in this way:

Sharks, as we propose our sweet deal, please enjoy your own personalized flavor…. We have Robert’s Investmint Mix, Barbara’s Delicious Dividends, Mr. Wonderful’s Shark Bait, Daymond’s Fashionable Flavor Factory, and last, we have the Cubanero…dark chocolate habanero sorbetto.

This strategy enabled the entrepreneurs to prove their concept and earn one offer from O’Leary. Nonetheless, they were unable to land a deal for other reasons: the potentially high level of competition and the presence of another prior investor in the deal.

An overall takeaway from these findings, then, is that entrepreneurs, when making pitches to seek funding for their businesses, need to prepare full explanations for questions surrounding the formation of the business and strive to appear personally credible and likable. Additionally, these findings indicate that despite the appearance that a particular stasis has been resolved during Q&A, the entrepreneur must be prepared for a potential return to prior issues because a single listener might be stuck on one of those issues and return to it later.

Navigating the Stasis of Quality

Stasis of quality issues also presented hurdles for many entrepreneurs. Key concerns in this stasis center on how the item or service would work as well as on the larger business model within which it is situated. Several businesses came across as fatally flawed due largely to how unusual or unnecessary they appeared to be, such as Simonsen’s sticky-note holder. Although the sharks were much kinder to Captain Nathan Buffet and Shane Cianciolo when they tried to promote their party boat business, Corks Away, these entrepreneurs also failed the stasis of quality. They opened their pitch with some success as they described their initial boating endeavors but then launched into a description of an unusual business expansion plan that included marketing pesto and creating a ride in Las Vegas. While the sharks espoused amusement throughout the presentation, they made no offers.

Investor fit also generated problems for entrepreneurs. Fit might be more difficult to control in the Shark Tank environment than in more traditional pitching situations because the sharks receive a broad array of pitches that are not necessarily tailored to their specific backgrounds. In more specialized pitching situations, however, questions of fit with investor interests can be overcome earlier in the process when the range of businesses is narrowed, as in college pitch contests that have predefined business categories to consider.

To successfully navigate the stasis of quality, then, entrepreneurs should evaluate both the quality of the concept they are proposing and the business model within which it will be situated. Providing evidence of the success of similar business models would also be helpful. Each of these pieces generally needs to be in place for the business to secure funding although in some Shark Tank situations sharks simply bought or attempted to buy the patent without a business structure.

Making Bank Through the Stasis of Quantity

As the goal of an investor is to generate revenue, it is unsurprising that the stasis of quantity served as a critical juncture for many proposals. Although the entrepreneurs entered the arena with the goal of securing funding, some seemed to forget that making money was the primary motivation for their audience of investors. While the sharks were susceptible to good stories, in most cases, a good story alone was not enough to secure a deal; they expected the quantitative components to make sense as well. Rare exceptions occurred with the pitches for the Living Christmas Tree business (Season 4, Episode 11) that Cuban bought into, surprising the rest of the sharks greatly, and with Ryan’s Barkery (Season 4, Episode 25), which managed to seal a deal with Corcoran. With both of these pitches, all the other sharks had dropped out because they did not see a potential for sufficient financial return. The larger point here is that the business generally needs a good story of some sort, but it cannot be carried by the story alone, especially if the numbers are not in place.

Pedagogical Applications

The findings of this study reveal the stasis points that led most often to failures in entrepreneurs’ attempts to pitch their ideas on Shark Tank and suggest preparation strategies that might help would-be entrepreneurs shore up their business ideas when preparing pitches. In academic settings, these strategies can be brought into entrepreneurship classrooms as well as business, technical, and professional communication classrooms as tools for students. The strategies I have delineated for building presence, increasing likability and credibility, and avoiding the appearance of greed might prove particularly useful as students seek support for their ideas. These strategies come into play especially when teaching presentation skills. In Shark Tank, the more successful entrepreneurs often prepared samples customized to individual sharks. While student presenters cannot always customize samples for every member of an audience, one strategy that often works well is to increase presence by bringing in a customized visual aid that can be passed around the room in addition to displaying relevant slides. For example, I regularly teach a section of business communication made up of both entrepreneurship and marketing majors. After we discuss the importance of presence as a strategy, the students often employ that technique as part of their final presentations when they bring in examples of branded materials they have created for their business ideas, such as fridge magnets, T-shirts, and customized stickers showcasing logos they have created.

Instructors can also teach students to segment the audience and develop appeals designed to address the needs, interests, and potential objections of different audience segments. In addition to traditional methods, such as requiring them to build audience profiles and conduct psychographic and demographic research, instructors can discuss the types of questions savvy audiences ask, as demonstrated above by the sharks, and encourage students to role-play Q&A sessions as part of their coursework. Teaching students how to navigate sophisticated persuasive settings, such as the pitch and Q&A genre, will improve the persuasive capability of students as they enter the workplace or start their own businesses.

In addition to evaluating audiences for oral presentations, entrepreneurial students would benefit from this emphasis on audience analysis strategies throughout the building of a business. In the early stages of business creation, they need to consider who their intended customer segments are, what problem their business will solve, and whether the idea has sufficient appeal to lead to enough purchases to make the business viable. As the entrepreneurs advance through the business-building life cycle, audience analysis will come into play repetitively when they need to seek funding. For instance, entrepreneurs need to know at what stage different investors are willing to consider a venture and the types of businesses these different investors tend to fund. As seen in Shark Tank, a lack of fit is often a downfall for entrepreneurs seeking funding; learning to analyze the audience and selecting appropriate targets for seeking funding are important skills for entrepreneurial students. Professional communication instructors can bring their knowledge of persuasive strategies into the classroom to help entrepreneurial students strategize how to move their businesses from ideas into reality.

Also, many of the persuasive strategies unveiled through this analysis of Shark Tank transfer well into teaching about employment communication across college majors. For example, job seekers attempt to convey the value of what they offer to organizations and to answer potential challengers. When a graduating student lacks relevant job experience and identifies that as a potential stasis point for being hired, the student can be taught strategies for demonstrating fit with the employer in other ways. Overall, the adroit job seeker can be taught to identify the stasis points that could interfere with moving the hiring process forward and how to address those points both within employment documents and in job interviews.

Applications for Professional Communicators and Limitations

Professional communicators might also benefit from observing this application of stasis theory within business contexts. In a world of ever-tightening budgets, communicators might find the revised stasis categories especially useful when seeking to persuade investors and administrators of the value of their undertakings and programmatic offerings and when considering the potential objections that they need to overcome.

This study contributes to scholarly understanding of the rhetorical role of funders within the pitch genre, especially within the Q&A segment; further, it makes connections between the ethical, inventive techniques of rhetoric and the practical context of business creation and expansion. Professional communicators and entrepreneurs will benefit from applying some of the principles shown here to preparing for Q&A situations in particular. While stasis has been used as both a generative tool for preparing arguments and an analytic tool for use in situ, its application here to the Q&A segment of pitches is novel.

The research was necessarily limited by the context of the Shark Tank program. Notably, deals are not finalized on-screen, and offers made may be withdrawn or altered even after the show airs. Contestants are likely picked to appear on Shark Tank at least partly on the basis of entertainment value. Simple, ordinary businesses like mom-and-pop restaurants are only occasionally featured, such as in Season 1, Episode 1, with Tod Wilson and his pie company. The unique characteristics of the television show could limit the generalizability of the data beyond this setting. Nonetheless, the high-stakes nature of the show, its national viewership, and its potential influence on the shaping of pitching behavior make it an appropriate data source for this study.

Future Research and Conclusion

Future research could examine the pitch genre in other settings, such as local and collegiate pitching contests, to see the rhetorical devices being used in those venues. Additionally, the conversations between rhetoric and entrepreneurship should continue, as the two fields have much to teach each other. Rhetoric is practical, relevant, and inherently creative; entrepreneurship is built on a foundation of creativity coupled with persuasion. Entrepreneurs realize they are engaged in a delicate act of persuasion, but they are not necessarily aware of the generative power of stasis theory that can facilitate or damage their persuasive acts. By putting rhetorical principles in conversation with entrepreneurial pursuits, we can teach our business students and local entrepreneurs best practices for persuading investors, and professional communicators addressing the business community can prepare successfully for the questions these audiences will bring. Overall, bringing a rhetorical lens to the pitch provides opportunities to uncover where errors have occurred as well as the steps needed to move investors and other audience members from stasis to “yes.”

Footnotes

Appendix

Coded Transcription for Shark Tank, Season 1, Episode 2, Pitch #4, 26:18-29:54

KEY

Stasis of Being [Stasis of Quality] Stasis of Quantity {Stasis of Place} *Fit* Dropouts

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers who provided helpful, constructive feedback that significantly improved this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Elizabeth C. Tomlinson

Notes

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