Columbus entrepreneurs behind ootBox secure deal on ‘Shark Tank’ | Local News

A pair of local entrepreneurs secured a $300,000 investment in their movable, temporary workspace idea, ootBox, during a March 18 episode of television’s “Shark Tank.”

On ABC’s “Shark Tank,” entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to celebrity business people to convince them to invest in their concepts. The different celebrity investors or “sharks” then compete to secure a deal for a share of the company if they are interested.

It turns out these “sharks” were interested in Allison Zofan and Robbie Friedman’s ootBox. The ootBox is a retrofitted shipping container that is insulated and sound proof, and has heat, air conditioning and electricity. As offices, they can be customized to fit a consumer’s needs and either leased or purchased.

After bidding between Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary and Barbara Corcoran, the founder of the real estate brokerage firm Corcoran Group was selected by the pair and invested $300,000 in the company in return for a 10% ownership stake.

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For Zofan and Friedman, this deal was the culmination of not only a lengthy audition process for the show, but a product development effort that began in 2020. Their idea was to give people a quiet, private space to work in amid the age of remote work. It was in the testing phase when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“Robbie came up with the idea when he was selling his last start-up,” Zofan told the Columbus Jewish News. “At the time, I was working for a consulting firm … with heads of corporate real estate across the globe, (considering) what the future of work looks like and the ways people are going to work moving forward.”

Zofan, a member of Congregation Torat Emet in Bexley, said it took the pandemic for folks to come around to the idea of an “escape pod” in their yards.

“Once COVID-19 hit, everybody understood our logic of having a backyard office at their house, but not in it,” she said. “Coffee shops weren’t the best places to have business meetings.”

Zofan also said neighbors would frequently ask to borrow Friedman’s “escape pod.”

“What he found was that neighbors would come over and use the escape pod whenever he wasn’t using it,” she said. “As it turns out, everyone needs a little space sometimes.”

Hospitals also began to use ootBoxes for COVID-19 testing sites and for drive-up lab services, Zofan said.

“This box can do a lot of different things and can be anything and go anywhere,” she said.

Demand for the product grew so fast that it attracted the attention of producers from “Shark Tank.” But Zofan said the process to appear on the show was lengthy.

“It had been such a long process – from going through the audition to practicing the pitch and going out” to Los Angeles, she said. “Once we flew home in July (2021), we didn’t know if we were going to air or not and you don’t know until three weeks before your show airs.”

Friedman, who moved to Columbus in 1992 and attended Columbus Torah Academy, called the duo’s appearance on “Shark Tank” a “once-in-a-lifetime deal.”

“I wasn’t expecting it to feel the way it did on a few episodes I watched – but it really does,” he said. “You also don’t really get enough time to ponder and pontificate because once you get there, you start pitching.”

Friedman, who attends Congregation Ahavas Sholom in Bexley, said that he was made to watch the show a lot before appearing.

“We did not have any particular sharks in mind, we just wanted to go out and do the best pitch and represent our company in the best way possible,” he said.

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Tom Hanks attends The Ohio State University in Columbus and writes for the student newspaper, The Lantern.