Shark Tank Season 16, Episode 20. Cuban’s Last Episode

Mark Cuban’s last night in the Tank felt like a highlight reel of everything the show turned into: big personalities, weirdly specific products, hard math, and people trying to decide how much of their company they’re willing to sell to move faster.

Season 16, Episode 20 had four pitches: giant candles, a tick-removal mitt, deviled eggs as a full-blown concept, and underwear you’re not supposed to see at all. On the couches: Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, Daymond John, and Kevin O’Leary. (ABC)

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Big Ass Luxuries – The Candle That Was Basically a Small Appliance

The first founders to walk in knew exactly how to use the TV moment.

Trent and Chloe Mervine (and sister Kelsey) rolled a 300-ounce candle into the Tank – the kind of thing that makes every regular jar candle look like a sample. Their company, Big Ass Luxuries, makes gigantic coconut–soy candles under the “Big Ass Candles” brand, with burn times measured not in hours, but in chunks of your life.

The smaller one – the Baby Big Ass – is 150 ounces; the bigger one is 300 ounces and can go up to about 1000 hours of burn time, depending on how you use it. (SharkTankRecap)

They weren’t playing small on the finance side either.

They asked for $500,000 for 5% equity, a clean $10 million valuation, arguing they’d done around $5 million in sales by the end of 2024, with about 95% of that coming from direct-to-consumer online sales. (SharkTankRecap, SharkTankBlog)

Kevin immediately locked onto the numbers – big top line, big valuation, solid margins. Daymond, who already has a candle business, tapped out fast. Mark and Barbara both admitted they just didn’t see themselves as candle people.

Lori did.

She looked at price-per-ounce versus other luxury brands, the outrageous branding, and the fact that people were already paying for these monsters. Then she did something very Lori:

• She offered $500k as a split: $250k loan + $250k for 15% equity.
• After some haggling, they ended at $250k loan + $250k for 13% equity on air. (SharkTankRecap)

From a finance perspective, that’s a quiet reset. The $10M “ask” melted down to something closer to $3.8–4M implied valuation, but in exchange they got:

• A shark who lives and breathes consumer product placement,
• A loan component instead of giving up even more equity,
• A national “we sell ridiculous candles” commercial shoved into primetime.

Did you know? The origin story is very on-brand: they started tinkering with huge candles during the Texas winter storm in 2021 when power outages had everyone burning whatever they could find. Bigger candles simply kept the house lit longer.

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TiCK MiTT – Saying “No Deal” and Still Winning

Then the tone changed.

Steve Abrams and his daughter Olivia walked in with TiCK MiTT, a microfiber glove meant to swipe ticks off your skin, clothes, or pet fur before they latch.

This wasn’t just “we thought it’d be cool.” Olivia had Lyme disease at seven. Her parents learned very quickly how much ticks can wreck a family’s life. TiCK MiTT is their prevention tool: run the mitt over your body, it snares loose ticks in those tiny loops, then toss it in the dryer for 10 minutes to fry anything trapped in there. (TiCK MiTT)

Financially, they weren’t shabby:

• Retail: about $19.99
• Landed cost: about $2.15
• Sales to date: roughly $432k, with around $252k projected for that year
• Early retail interest: 70+ retailers kicking the tires
  (SEOaves analysis)

The Sharks liked the margins, liked the mission, and had the obvious liability questions:
Does it catch every tick? (No, but lab tests suggest it grabs a very high percentage of loose ones.) How do you get people to actually use it after every hike? (That one is still a behavior change problem.)

Then came the offers:

• Barbara: $250,000 for 30% equity.
• Kevin: $250,000 for 20% equity + $1 royalty per unit until he recouped $2M.

They could have easily folded under the pressure – Olivia’s story had Barbara visibly emotional – but Steve kept his head firmly in the numbers. A $1 royalty on a $19.99 item with distributors in the mix? That’s a pretty heavy tax.

They pushed Barbara down on equity; she wouldn’t budge. They rejected Kevin’s royalty outright. And then they did the thing most founders are terrified to do:

They walked.

“We really do understand what we have and we can move it forward without them,” Steve said afterward. “So giving away that much at this point just did not make sense for us.”
— Steve Abrams (SEOaves)

From a business lens, that’s not ego; that’s math. At their stage, a 30% chunk plus a big royalty would have made every future round more painful.

And the post-episode numbers kind of back them up:

• Sales tripled after airing,
• They added KiDS MiTT,
• They got into Fleet Farm, Duluth Trading Co., Dunham’s Sports, and rolled into multiple countries (Canada, South Korea, Norway, Sweden).
  

Did you know? They worked with a tick scientist and a product engineer to tune the fiber loops so they physically trap ticks more effectively. This is literally “applied entomology meets textiles.” (TiCK MiTT)

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Deviled Egg Co. – The Last Cuban Deal

Now things got serious…eggstremely serious…did you catch that…? Here it comes Deviled Egg Co.

Raechel Van Buskirk and Alexi Wellman came in with a concept that sounds like a joke until you see the line out the door: a deviled egg restaurant.

They started in Omaha with a trailer, then a store, then life punched them in the face. Raechel was diagnosed with breast cancer. They moved operations to North Texas to be closer to family and rebuilt there. By the time they hit the Tank, they had three locations around Dallas and a shipping operation sending “egg sushi” all over the country.
(CNBC, Houston Chronicle)

They weren’t shy on flavors either: crab rangoon eggs, cheeseburger eggs, chicken quesadilla eggs, “everything bagel” eggs – around 19–20 core options, plus seasonal rotation.

The numbers:

• Just under $1.3M in 2024 revenue, and profitable
• Ask: $150,000 for 5% equity
  (CNBC)

The Sharks took a bite and you could see the mood flip.

Daymond looked genuinely annoyed… not at the founders, but at how much he liked the food.

“This might be the best thing I’ve eaten in 16 years on this show.”
— Daymond John (Houston Chronicle)

He still passed – restaurants aren’t where he wants to park his money. Lori loved it but bailed for the same reason.

Barbara and Kevin both made plays:

• Barbara: $150k for 15%
• Kevin: $150k for 20%

Then Cuban did the Cuban thing. He wanted in, but with Barbara. Together, they offered:

• $250,000 for 20% – 10% each.

Raechel didn’t even pretend to play it cool.

“I cannot wait to make them so much money,” she said.
— Raechel Van Buskirk (CNBC)

That became Mark Cuban’s final deal in Shark Tank history.

From a purely financial view, they traded a $3M ask valuation for something closer to $1.25M, but they gained:

• A billionaire who lives in Dallas and understands local scaling,
• Barbara’s restaurant and brand instincts,
• The kind of PR you can’t buy: “Mark Cuban’s last Shark Tank investment.”

Did you know? Post-show, they added more grab-and-go spots and built a “Shark Tank Special” sampler – 36 eggs shipped nationwide – specifically to capture that post-episode demand spike.

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Stringys – When “Invisible” Underwear Gets Very Visible Margins

Last up: a pitch that could have gone cringe but somehow stayed very clean.

Olivia Karina and Elvira Troger introduced Stringys, an “invisible” panty line meant to solve panty lines. No side straps, no waistbands, just a bonded, adhesive underwear that sits where it’s supposed to and disappears under clothes.
(Stringys)

Their numbers:

• $180,000 in revenue over 11 months
• Cost about $2 per unit
• Retail price $14
• Already raised $400,000 at a $10M valuation from early investors and influencers
• Projected $1.8M in revenue for the next year

From a Shark’s perspective, this is textbook: big margin, simple problem, shareable product. The catch was the valuation – they’re still relatively early, but priced as if they’re midway through a hyper-growth run.

Kevin came in with one of his usual hybrids: $300,000 for 3% + $0.50 royalty per unit forever

Barbara liked the product but not that royalty. She countered with $300,000 for 3% + $0.22 royalty per unit forever

Olivia and Elvira took Barbara’s offer.

From an investor’s lens, Barbara basically sidestepped the valuation entirely. Three percent is tiny, but that $0.22 per unit on a $14 retail, with millions of units sold, becomes real money over time. For the founders, the royalty is noticeable – but still survivable given a $2 cost base.

Did you know? They’d already moved more than 100,000 pairs by the time much of the coverage was written, and their tagline “seamless & seen-less” is right on the package and in the ABC blurbs.

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The Last Word from Cuban

The episode ends the way it should: with Mark Cuban reflecting on 16 seasons of putting his own money into strangers’ ideas.

“What I’d like to say is thanks [to] everybody who took a chance on me, all the entrepreneurs who said yes to me — who knows how many millionaires we’ve created — and their employees.”
— Mark Cuban (CNBC)

If you strip away the TV polish, Shark Tank Season 16 Episode 20 is a neat little case study in trade-offs:

• Big Ass Luxuries accepts a lower valuation to get a growth partner and some non-dilutive capital.
• TiCK MiTT turns down structurally painful deal terms and still grows into a bigger business off the exposure.
• Deviled Egg Co. gives up 20% but aligns itself with two Sharks whose networks actually match what they do.
• Stringys keeps most of the cap table intact but agrees to a perpetual royalty that will shave margins forever in exchange for acceleration now.

Different paths, same question:
How much are you willing to give up, and on what terms, to get where you’re trying to go faster?