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Honeyfund made its Shark Tank debut in Season 6 with a free honeymoon registry. The website’s operation was discussed at the time with CEO Sara Margulis.
What is Honeyfund?
Honeyfund is the online wedding gift registry that makes it simple to give and receive the ideal wedding present — cash! Every honeyfund represents the particular style of the couple and makes giving quick, simple, and cost-effective for wedding guests.
Honeyfund is a platform for crowdfunding weddings. You create an account and then ask your friends and family for contributions. You may use contributions toward covering the cost of your honeymoon or any other purpose.
As the most trusted cash gifting website for honeymoons, wedding costs, down payments, charities, and more, Honeyfund has assisted over a million couples in making their newlywed dreams a reality through our user-friendly fundraising platform.
Is this your first time walking down the aisle? As arranging a wedding may be extremely expensive, you should become familiar with Honeyfund. Honeyfund can assist in easing that burden.
| Firm Name | Honeyfund |
| Founders | Josh and Sara Margulis |
| Startup/Product | Honeyfund Registry Service |
| Investment Offering | 10% equity in Honeyfund for $400,000 |
| Shark Who Accepted the Deal | Kevin O’Leary |
| Final Deal | 33% Transaction revenue for $400,000 until the investment returns |
| Episode Aired | Episode 6, Season 6 |
| Website | Honeyfund Website |
Who is the Owner of Honeyfund?
Josh and Sara Margulis are the founders of Honeyfund. The Margulis created Honeyfund after they had each pursued separate careers. Josh worked for Adobe and Xerox as a software engineer.
Sarah, an MBA marketer, was in charge of content and web marketing. Sara is currently the CEO of Honeyfund, while Josh is the CTO.
The Margulis created Honeyfund in response to their own experiences. The couple wanted to spend their honeymoon in Fiji.
They found few viable options online for wedding registries; the current sites were too expensive.
They decided to build a website, and the response has been incredible. They received $5100 in donations, which started this wonderful initiative.
Honeyfund solves the problem of couples receiving similar presents as they frequently get similar gifts.
Honeyfind allows couples to create a registry by creating an account. The guests are then invited to contribute to the couple’s wedding expenses.
The Margulis found it difficult to find an affordable wedding registry, and Honeyfind was the solution.
Basic packages are free, and the platform earns revenue solely from advertisements on its website and upgrading rates.
Josh and Sara Margulis are a charming married couple from Sebastopol, California (also known as Sonoma wine country), and they founded Honeyfund, an online honeymoon registry.
When Josh and Sara Margulis of Sebastopol, California, planned their wedding, they found an online website that allowed guests to contribute to their honeymoon fund instead of buying unnecessary items.
They created Honeyfund after being unable to find a site that catered to this niche.
As ambitious entrepreneurs, they built the Honeyfund site to finance their wedding and honeymoon – but when they learned the site was popular, and their wedding guests praised the idea, they knew they’d made a great move.
Newlyweds whose conversations about starting a business after marriage had already sparked a smashing success were convinced it was the perfect venture to launch.
As a crowd fundraising site focused exclusively on honeymoon excursions, it offered the same service to other prospective brides and grooms.
Guests can contribute to the honeymoon costs after the couple shares their plans. Consumers spreading the word about a great business has always been an effective method of growing business.
However, Josh and Sara were invited to participate in Shark Tank in 2014 by an insider for Honeyfund.
How was the Shark Tank Pitch of Honeyfund?
Josh and Sara appeared on Shark Tank requesting an investment of $400,000 in exchange for a 10% stake in Honeyfund.
Josh and Sara enter the stage costumed as a newlywed couple on their honeymoon, complete with Hawaiian t-shirts and flower leis draped around their necks.
Honeyfund’s concept is amazing and long overdue: a free, one-of-a-kind wedding register where couples may use donations as wedding gifts to fund their dream honeymoon.
A honeymoon becomes the couple’s wedding gift, funded jointly by their guests. “We call this crowd-gifting,” Sara explains, and the sharks are impressed.
“Would you prefer a set of Chinese porcelain or a vacation to China?”
Sara and Josh hand out floral leis and Mai Tais in adorable Tikki bar coconut cups instead of traditional samples.
Permit us to propose a toast!” As the show moves into the phase of the number, the sharks and competitors raise their coconut cups in a toast to cash flow.
- Total fundraising: $200 million
- Sources of revenue: PayPal transaction fees
- Annual revenue: $67 million in sales
- Annual revenue from sales: $987,000
- The annual profit from sales: $219,000
Kevin observes that this business raises the fundamental, age-old customer acquisition costs (CAC) issue.
Sara notes that because each wedding registry account invites, on average, 150 wedding guests, their exposure and brand recognition increase automatically with each new registered couple.
It costs them an average of 0.88 cents to acquire a new client, and they value their customers at $9. These figures may appear impressive to the uninitiated, but Mark Cuban is doubtful.
Cuban argues that saving half a million dollars as a couple is tremendous. However, it is not always investable. He’s interested in learning about the company’s long-term and growth strategies.
“Because, to be quite honest, ten years in business and generating $987,000 in gross revenue is abysmal.”
“Up to this point, it’s been a lifestyle business, but of course – we’re here because there’s more,” Sara explains.
Eventually, people began to use Honeyfund for purposes other than weddings and honeymoons. The pair took this concept and ran with it, resulting in the establishment of Plumfund. Plumfund enables users to crowdfund anything, for free, online.
“Hold on,” Robert says. “So…instead of increasing Honeyfund, you’re going to create another fund?”
“Our response is to create a portfolio of funds,” Sara continues, displaying an entire family of other crowdsourced websites with a click of the television display.
“Ugh,” Cuban responds, evidently repulsed by the expansion plan.
We may see a variety of future funds or fund concepts as the camera moves to the display, including:
Fund for Anniversaries Fund for Birthdays Fund for Babies Fund for Graduation Mazel Endowment
Kevin digs a little deeper into Plum Fund to determine the possibility of success for these other future funds. Plum Fund made $400,000 in transaction sales and $10,000 in revenue over the last 12 months.
When the sharks agree that it’s a terrific idea, but they’re not completely sold, Sara takes the presentation in a new way. “I’ve had another thought,” she says as another slide appears on the television screen.
Lori is the first to resign, despite her praise for their plan to expand internationally and grab the Spanish-speaking market. “I believe crowdfunding is oversaturated. As a result, I’m withdrawing.”
Kevin appears to be fascinated, but he is skeptical. “How do I recoup my $400,000 if I fund you today?” Sara responds that they intend to rapidly scale the firm over the next five years and eventually dominate the crowd-gifting industry.
“Guys, what you just stated makes no sense,” Cuban interjects. “There is no such thing as rapid scaling over five years. By incorporating these additional possibilities, you are implying that you are not already dominating the space.”
“We currently dominate this space – we have a 30% market share.”
“You’ve built a beautiful little business, and again, congratulations,” Cuban replies. “However, when a corporation begins to look elsewhere, it signals to me that it is operating on autopilot.
If the company was developing rapidly and becoming lucrative, you would inform us that you require this funding to maintain up. However, such is not the case here. And with that, Cuban is no longer in the running. As a result, I’m withdrawing.”
After Cuban and Lori withdraw, the Honeyfunders receive three proposals from the remaining sharks in quick succession.
Robert Herjavec offers $500,000 in exchange for 50% stock. He asserts that they have done an outstanding job creating transaction value; on this front, they should concentrate their efforts (not on brand extensions).
Kevin then suggests a more complicated contract in the spirit of “Mr. Wonderful”: $400,000 with no equity stake in exchange for one-third of their transaction revenue until he recoups $1.2 million (or three times his original investment).
Finally, Barb Shark entered the fray, giving $400,000 in exchange for 30% stock. Robert makes a hasty attempt to equal her but to no avail.
Sara and Josh agreed to deal with Kevin’s requirements after running the figures on stage.
Final Agreement: Kevin O’Leary agreed to invest $400,000 for 30% equity of Honeyfund until $1.2 million is generated.
What Happened To Honeyfund After Shark Tank?
Was Honeyfund successful in this appearance, and what have they been up to lately?
Let us begin by looking at the immediate consequences of this. A Honeyfund representative said visitors increased from 150 to 5,000 during their Shark Tank debut.
This growth rate has slowed, but Honeyfund has been experiencing an average 45 percent increase in online traffic since it first appeared on Shark Tank.
Since their appearance on Shark Tank, they’ve handled $514 million in gifts. They’ve expanded into travel gift cards and partnered with stores to build universal gift registries, so that wedding guests can now finance more than just travel or experiential packages through a wedding guest’s Honeyfund website.
The couple’s earlier ventures, such as Babyfund and Gradfund, have been absorbed into Plumfund, quadrupled in size since they appeared on Shark Tank.
The Honeyfund Instagram account is very popular, with over 36,400 followers, and its Facebook page has more than 29,000 friends and followers.
Honeyfund has garnered great coverage in The New York Times, Vogue, BRIDE magazine, and several other publications.
In short, Honeyfund was a huge success, and their debut on Shark Tank was one of their best decisions. Years of effort and months of rehearsals paid off more than the pair could have anticipated.
Honeyfund appears to be a place where dreams come true. HoneyFund is still in business and doing extremely offering customers the best experience.
The valuation of HoneyFund was $4 million when it appeared on Shark Tank. Honeyfund net worth is estimated to be $25 million.
