Novel Effect Update | Shark Tank Season 9

Andrew Smith September 9, 2022June 11, 2023

Parents, Matt and Melissa Hammersley, came to Shark Tank to pitch their app, Novel Effect, which began as an idea at their baby shower when a friend was reading a children’s story. The voice was captivating and even included sound effects that brought them deeper into the book. After this light bulb moment, the couple sold their house and moved to Seattle in hopes to make it big with their company. Will the sharks be taken to another place by this new method of storytelling? Let’s see if they take a bite in this Novel Effect update.

Shark Tank Novel Effect Update

Entrepreneur: Matt and Melissa Hammersley
Business: Narration app with sound effects for children’s books
Ask: $500,000 for 10% equity
Result: $500,000 for 15% equity
Shark: Lori Greiner

Novel Effect is an app that currently has 75 titles available to read. They are in the stage of building their library and getting customer acquisition. So far there is no revenue.

Mark Cuban felt there was too much of a challenge to acquire customers and dropped out. Daymond John quickly followed as he was just not that interested in the product.

Kevin O’Leary had been in a similar business when their parents were using CDs instead of apps but described the difficulty in getting customers for this type of product. After bickering with Lori Greiner, he dropped out.

Lori saw the potential here and thought it was a great product so she gave an offer of $500,000 for 20%. Matt countered with $500,000 for 12.5%. Guest shark, Sara Blakely, asked if Lori would want to go in with her.

After thinking it over, Lori decided she would be giving away more equity than she wanted and stayed with her offer. Matt countered back at $500,000 for 13%, and Lori came back with $500,000 for 15%. After some thought, they all agreed and made a deal.

At the time of this Novel Effect update, the company is still in business and runs on a subscription basis. However, it seems that they later turned down Lori’s offer and instead raised $3 million in funding from Amazon and some other companies. They have three different plans: one for parents, one for educators, and one for schools. You can sign up for any of these on their website and download the app from the app store.

Since appearing on Shark Tank, Novel Effect has been featured many times including in Forbes Magazine and on The Today Show. They have profited over $1 million and partnered with the Jim Hensen company for narration. Novel Effect now has over 750 titles in its library.

You can find the other company updates from Season 9 here:

Don’t forget to take a look at our Season 9 products page! We’ve got more company updates from Shark Tank Season 9.

Andrew Smith

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Andrew Smith is the founder and owner of Shark Tank Recap. He is a longtime Shark Tank fan that has been watching it for years and has seen every episode multiple times. His friends know him as the Shark Tank expert, because he can answer any question about the show! His favorite Shark Tank products are Bertello's pizza oven and Bug Bite Thing!