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Jesse Genet Of ‘Lumi’ Finds Success After ‘Shark Tank’ Denial

By Sarah Field
Published on: 21:17 PST, Jun 25, 2015

Jesse Genet held firm in the Shark Tank. After opening with a hefty valuation, asking for $250,000 in exchange for 5 percent of her print company Lumi, she received a bit of a beating. The panel didn’t think Lumi was worth $5 million. Nonetheless she was offered a series of debt-equity deals, all of which she refused.

Shortly after she taped her Shark Tank appearance, Genet took Lumi to Y Combinator, a start-up incubator. She joined in December 2014, a couple of months before her Shark Tank episode originally aired. In March 2015 Business Insider reported that Lumi had $2.5 million in sales, a significant increase over the $1 million she reported during her Shark Tank taping.

Genet told BI she was not bothered by the harsh words of the sharks. She said the experience gave her a valuable perspective on her business.

“[The comments] were dicey, but I can handle that. [‘Shark Tank’] helped us realize what was really big about our business and what was not scalable.”

Lumi started with a Kickstarter campaign around its signature product, Inkodye, which becomes permanent on natural surfaces after sun exposure. Genet told Tech Crunch in March the campaign, which greatly surpassed its $50,000 goal by raising $250,000, showed them what people were really interested in.

“What we were really doing that time, as we saw the retailers and the customers and the way that they were using it, was learning how people gravitate to this sort of creative product.”

YC helped Lumi redesign its website and expand its product offerings. The company now sells rubber stamps with logos uploaded by customers, ready-to-go and customized negatives for printing, printing kits, and silkscreens.

In March, Genet was again pitching Lumi to potential investors at YC demo day.

Despite the grilling she received on Shark Tank, Genet received some supportive comments from the sharks upon her exit. Mark Cuban congratulated her and Robert Herjavec later tweeted good wishes.

And Genet was busy filling orders.

Shark Tank is in summer reruns and will return with an all-new season 7 in September.

[Image Michael Desmond/ABC via Bustle]

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