GrooveBook

GrooveBook was a photo-printing service built around a phone app. Subscribers chose pictures from their phones, and the company mailed them a small printed book of those photos on a recurring schedule. It was created by Julie and Brian Whiteman. The couple pitched in Season 5, Episode 13, asking for $150,000 in exchange for 20% of their company. The deal they got was unusual. Instead of taking ownership in the business, Mark Cuban and Kevin O'Leary teamed up to buy most of GrooveBook's licensing rights for the requested $150,000. TechCrunch and Forbes both described that structure. It is not clear from the sources whether the sharks' arrangement fully closed before the company was sold. The idea took off because it made printing photos easy and cheap at a time when most pictures stayed on phones. That made GrooveBook attractive to larger players in the photo business, and it was acquired by Shutterfly less than a year after the episode aired. The sale price was widely reported, and the show itself highlighted the sale in a later update segment. As a standalone product, GrooveBook appears to be gone. Its old web address no longer loads a working site, and there is no evidence of a separate service today. This page lists the company as acquired. Its main legacy for Shark Tank fans is how quickly the business went from a licensing deal on TV to a sale. The acquisition terms are covered in the update below.