Chicago Booth MBA student Andrea Sreshta and her business partner Anna Stork appeared television’s “Shark Tank” to seek funding for their inflatable solar-powered light startup, LuminAID. The group received offers from all five investors, including entrepreneur and billionaire Mark Cuban, who made the winning bid. Cuban offered $200,000 for a 15 percent stake in LuminAID, plus an option to lead the next round of investing with $300,000.
“I asked Booth classmates and friends to come to the Gleacher Center and pretend to be the five sharks and stress test us, help us prepare for those questions we may not have seen coming,” Sreshta told Chicago Booth Magazine. “They would give us two or three hours in the evening. They asked us a lot tougher questions than the sharks did.”
That practice helped once it was all light, camera, action. On the show, Cuban understood the potential behind their idea. On the other side of the tank, the two young entrepreneurs believed Cuban’s offer would help their budding company expand the sales organization, finance production and distribute around the world.
“We wanted to work with somebody who can help us differentiate our brand and help us stay competitive,” Sreshta told Chicago Booth Magazine.
LuminAID was created in 2011 when Sreshta and Stork wanted to design a product to help relief efforts after that massive earthquake in Haiti. Their class project morphed into a humanitarian mission by inventing a solar-powered light that is inflatable and waterproof to help people in emergencies. In 2012, LuminAID won the John Edwardson Social New Venture Challenge (SNVC), a yearly competition organized by the Chicago Booth’s Social Enterprise Initiative and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. LuminAID also won the first-place prize of $100,000 in the 2013 Midwest Clean Energy Challenge, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. It was also named an “Up-and-Comer” winner at the 2014 Chicago Innovation Awards.