Entrepreneur on Shark Tank Requests $1 Million to Develop Water-to-Gold Machine, Faces Tough Criticism

If you’ve ever watched Shark’s Tank then no doubt you’ve seen at least one mental idea or business proposal from a hopeful entrepreneur.

Some are more memorable than others, like US businessman Mark Sullivan who promised the Sharks a share of $96 billion in profit with his bizarre invention when he appeared on the TV show.

Complete with business drawings, Sullivan proposed a generator that would use a hurricane style wind force to create gold as a waste product.

Watch his pitch here:

In the third series of the show, Sullivan approached the business panel as he asked for $1 million investment for 10% equity to help him get his gold money making venture off the ground in just nine months.

He claimed that 200 of the generators he was pitching could generate an income of $96 billion from gold, and yet he still didn’t get any buy in from the Sharks.

In his pitch to the Sharks, who sat in disbelief with the shock on their faces evident, Sullivan explained how his huge generators will pull in massive amounts of ocean water to create contained hurricanes for electricity production.

Gotta love a trier, and Mark Sullivan was one of Shark Tank’s best. (ABC)

Yet the most interesting part isn’t the electricity, as Sullivan then explains how the ‘waste product’ of the process is gold and how he believes he can collect bars and bars of gold which can be sold for profit.

His plans for a 100ft generator that could essentially house a mini hurricane and convert 1 cubic metre of water into gold sounded so outrageous that he didn’t receive any of the $1m he was looking for.

Whilst the Sharks were left pretty stunned by Sullivan and his gold pitch, the proposal has gone down in TV history as one of the most memorable on the show.

Sullivan first appeared in 2012, but over ten years later and the internet is still talking about his pitch.

On Reddit, those praising his unique pitch discussed his appearance in season three as they highlighted how funny the reactions of the Sharks were. One person wrote: “Everyone’s faces in this episode just KILL me.”

“The Sullivan generator. That s*** was hilarious,” said another.

Despite his memorable pitch, Sullivan didn’t get the $1 million he hoped for. (ABC)

Other memorable pitches from the TV show include an idea to surgically implant Bluetooth devices into people’s ears, a bird feeder that would deliver shocks to squirrels if they tried to touch it, and a motorcycle movie that had no actors, stars, or plans to ever be made.

Another absurd idea that never quite made it off the ground was from the first series, where a woman proposed the idea of ‘a sticky note strip’ – which quite literally was