"Very interesting valuation" - When Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary appreciated Nameberry's pitch

Shark Tank season 16 episode 10 featured a pitch from Nameberry entrepreneur, Pamela Redmond. The episode dropped on ABC on January 31, 2025. The investors were joined by Kendra Scott as a guest shark.

As for Pamela, she was seeking $350,000 for 5% of her company. She started her pitch on Shark Tank with the impact of names and how they can affect our mindset in life. According to Pamela, Kevin's name means "handsome in the Irish language, but it can also mean kid, gentle, and beloved." Lori objected jokingly and said that it "doesn't fit" but Kevin was in total agreement.

As for Shark Tank investor Mark, his name comes from Mars, the Roman god of wars. Lori's name comes from the Laurel tree, Pamela explained, which is a symbol of "victory and honor."

Kendra's name started as a man's name Kenneth, but soon made a name for itself. Pamela explained that Daymond's name means "keeper of livestock." All the sharks laughed and agreed that it was indeed true and Pamela pointed out his bee-keeping hobby.

Moving on, Pamela explained that her intrigue and curiosity toward baby names is what prompted her to create Nameberry, the largest site dedicated to baby names. Continuing, she revealed that they have a huge database, lists, and an active community. After her pitch was done, Kevin took note of it and expressed,

"That's a very interesting valuation."

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Shark Tank entrepreneur Pamela Redmond pitches her website Nameberry

Pamela Redmond was the second pitch of the Shark Tank season 16 episode 10. Her baby name database is huge and she wishes to add the power of AI to the same based on that. Kevin took an early interest in the company and asking further, clarified about how they make money. Pamela responds with,

"We make money from advertising at the moment. But, you come in because we want to change that model... We want to bring AI to Nameberry."

Nameberry's founder further explained that her aim with the website is to train their own AI model based on the data they already have. Revealing that they have "millions of pages of information developed over 40 years," Pamela said that it is a singular property.

Mark explained that this would require huge amounts of money that she would ultimately have to spend. The best profitable thing that she could do right now, according to the Shark, is to license all the data that they have and lend it to a third party.

Kevin, after hearing about her newsletter subscribers and yearly profit, expressed,

"I will say one thing about the data. It's very, very hard today, to capture the mother or father's name at the time of birth. It's really hard. You can't get it from the hospital. There's all kinds of data scraping trying to figure out when they buy their first Pampers and all that other stuff. But you may be the cleanest, truest source."

Pamela then revealed that three people own the company right now, but she has the biggest share of them all. Soon, the negotiation between her and Shark Tank investor Kevin started and they counter-offered each other.

Kevin wanted more than 5%, possibly 33.3% but Pamela was against it. She said the best she could do was 24.9% equity in the business. Explaining, this offer would mean that she could keep 50.1% of the company. Kevin accepted the deal and walked over to hug her.

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Shark Tank season 16 releases weekly episodes on ABC at 8 PM Eastern Time on Fridays.