Yes, GrooveBook got a deal on Shark Tank, though not the one its founders asked for. Julie and Brian Whiteman pitched their app, which printed up to 100 phone photos into a small book and mailed it every month for $2.99, in an episode that aired on January 10, 2014. They asked for $150,000 for 20% of the company and ended up with a deal from Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary for $150,000 and 80% of the licensing rights. Nine months later Shutterfly bought the business. The price is usually quoted as $14.5 million; Shutterfly’s own annual report says it acquired “certain assets of Dot Copy, Inc. (‘Groovebook’) for a total aggregate purchase price of $13.7 million,” including a performance-based earn-out. It was one of the fastest Shark Tank exits on record. It did not last as a product: Shutterfly later wound the service down, and groovebook.com no longer serves a page in October 2026.
The GrooveBook Shark Tank deal at a glance
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Episode | Season 5, Episode 13 (aired Jan. 10, 2014) |
| Pitched by | Julie and Brian Whiteman |
| Ask | $150,000 for 20% (a $750,000 valuation) |
| Claimed on air | More than 18,000 subscribers in eight months, per Shark Tank Blog |
| Deal | $150,000 for 80% of GrooveBook’s licensing rights (Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary) |
| Sale | Shutterfly, Oct. 31, 2014: $13.7 million aggregate, cash plus an earn-out (Shutterfly 10-K) |
| Status, Oct. 2026 | Service discontinued; groovebook.com returns no page |
The ask valued GrooveBook at $750,000 (our post-money valuation calculator shows the sum). The deal did not buy equity at all, so it implies no valuation. Shutterfly paid about 18 times the founders’ own number nine months later.
What GrooveBook was
The product was a subscription. Users picked up to 100 photos from their phone each month and GrooveBook printed and mailed a small bound book of them for $2.99, according to Shark Tank Blog’s account of the episode. Shutterfly described it in its February 2015 earnings release as “an iPhone and Android app and subscription service that prints up to 100 mobile phone photos in a GrooveBook and mails it to customers every month.”
The economics were thin. Shark Tank Blog records the founders telling the Sharks a book cost $2.30 to make and ship, which left about 69 cents an order. The bet was volume: they said they had more than 18,000 subscribers in eight months.
What happened in the Tank
The negotiation was one of the more unusual of Season 5, according to Shark Tank Blog. Kevin O’Leary offered $750,000 for the entire company; the founders said they wanted $6 million, and he withdrew. Robert Herjavec and Lori Greiner together offered $375,000 for 50%. Cuban was interested in licensing the technology to photo-printing companies, and he and O’Leary combined on a final offer: $150,000 for 80% of GrooveBook’s licensing rights, leaving the founders all of the equity in the operating business. The Whitemans accepted.
Did the GrooveBook deal close?
Shark Tank Blog says it did. The only primary document on the company’s later life is Shutterfly’s, and it records an asset purchase, not the details of any licensing arrangement, so how the Sharks’ licensing interest was treated in the sale has not been made public.
The Shutterfly sale: $13.7 million, not $14.5 million
The figure most recaps use, $14.5 million, traces to press coverage at the time, including Forbes as cited by Wikipedia. Shutterfly’s Form 10-K for 2014 is more precise. In Note 6, “Acquisitions,” it says:
“On October 31, 2014, the Company acquired certain assets of Dot Copy, Inc. (‘Groovebook’) for a total aggregate purchase price of $13.7 million, consisting of an upfront cash purchase amount and a future performance-based earn-out subject to achieving certain financial metrics.”
The same note shows how little of that price was for identifiable assets. Shutterfly allocated $0.6 million to the customer base, $0.5 million to the Groovebook tradename, $0.4 million to patents and $0.2 million to developed technology. The remaining $12.0 million, about 88% of the price, went to goodwill, which the filing attributes primarily to “manufacturing and production synergies and synergies from Groovebooks’ market position.” Shutterfly also said GrooveBook’s results before the deal “were not material,” so no pro forma figures were published. In other words, Shutterfly paid mostly for what GrooveBook’s subscribers would do inside a much larger printing operation, not for GrooveBook’s own revenue.
The filing does not split the $13.7 million between the upfront cash and the earn-out, and we found no later disclosure of how much of the earn-out was paid.
What happened to GrooveBook after the sale
For several years GrooveBook was one of Shutterfly’s named brands, alongside Tiny Prints and BorrowLenses, in its earnings releases. By mid-2019 the subscription was shrinking: Shutterfly’s quarterly report for the period ended June 30, 2019 attributed part of a drop in consumer orders to “an expected decrease in orders in Groovebook.” Shark Tank Blog reports that Shutterfly stopped operating the service in April 2022. When we checked on October 28, 2026, groovebook.com returned a 404 error. Shutterfly itself was taken private by Apollo Global Management in 2019.
What founders can take from it
First, read the licensing deal carefully: Cuban and O’Leary bought rights to license the technology, not a share of the company, which left the founders free to sell the business itself. Second, an acquirer can pay a lot for a small business when the value is in its fit. Almost 90% of Shutterfly’s price was goodwill, the premium for what GrooveBook’s customers were worth inside Shutterfly’s factories. Third, a sale ends the founders’ risk, not the product’s. The service was later wound down, which is common when a small app joins a large company. Our ranking of the most successful Shark Tank companies lists the other documented exits; Bantam Bagels is another sale whose buyer later closed the business.
