Michael Burtov is the founder of GeoOrbital a wheel that can turn any regular bicycle into an electric bike. And the miraculous high tech transformation happens without tools and in less than one minute. He and his CTO Dakota Decker (a development engineer who left Elon Musk’s SpaceX to work for GeoOrbital) are pitching the company on Shark Tank on October 29. According to Dakota’s bio: “Dakota is very proud to have earned his master’s degree at the age of 19 and declined an invitation to pursue a PhD so that he could build rockets with SpaceX.” Burtov and Decker have a very good chance of landing the $500,000 investment they seek on Shark Tank in exchange for 5 percent equity. So far the GeoOrbital electric bike startup is known for shunning venture capital and crowdsourcing its growth. GeoOrbital launched a Kickstarter campaign in May 2016 and met their funding goal in under an hour. In the following 45 days, they raised $1.26 million from 1,623 people. That is one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns ever.
Since launching the product, GeoOrbital has made $1.8 million in gross sales (2000+ wheels). The company is currently trying to raise an additional $1.07 million before December 1 via StartEngine. So far (as of October 28), GeoOrbital has raised $771,592. They are accepting a minimum investment of $400. Shark Tank airs Sundays at 9pm on ABC.
