Sharks sway the vote as Las Vegas doorstop business wins G2E’s first Innovation Incubator

October 11, 2018 10:00 PM
  • Howard Stutz, CDC Gaming Reports
October 11, 2018 10:00 PM
  • Howard Stutz, CDC Gaming Reports

For a few moments, Inside Injuries, an application to enhance sports betting information, looked like the winner of the first Innovation Incubator at the Global Gaming Expo.

Story continues below

But then two of the three celebrity judges – stars of ABC’s Shark Tank – changed their minds based on the age-old theory that nothing beats sales.

By a 2-to-1 vote, the DoorPRO, from Vegas Doorstop and company founder/CEO Bill Hengler earned the $10,000 first prize and a booth at next year’s G2E.

“My wife would like to go to Bora Bora, but I’m going to put the money back into the business,” Hengler said after presenting his product, which helps prop open hotel room doors using an ergonomically correct solution, so bellmen can deliver bags or housekeeping can clean rooms.

“The money will go toward the next generation of the product,” said Hengler, who was a bellman on the Las Vegas Strip when he came up with the idea for the device in the late 2000s.

Since 2010, he has sold more than 200,000 units to the hotel industry, including several Strip resorts, at an average price of $8 a pair – or $1.6 million in revenue.

Those figures impressed both Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Shares ETF Investments, and Daymond John, CEO and founder of FUBU, two of the stars of Shark Tank.

“Honestly, I first thought this product was a piece of s**t,” O’Leary said. “But scratch that. I love sales, and this guy has revenue.”

O’Leary did disagree with Hengler about the potential for the product being sold in retail locations to consumers.

“I just don’t see it,” he said.

DoorPRO fits securely into a doorjamb at the midpoint, so a person using it doesn’t have to bend over constantly. Hengler told the judges the product has thus far been sold to universities, Walt Disney Hotels, and military bases.

Meanwhile, Cindy Eckert (Whitehead), CEO of The Pink Ceiling and Sprouts, sided with Inside Injuries, developed by Tracy Hankin. The sports betting application combines sports medicine with statistical modeling to predict the impact of injuries on player performance. She said the information had an 80 percent accuracy rate and would provide data to bettors and the sports book industry.

All three judges had originally sided with Hankin’s business.

“The potential for new businesses generated by sports betting is huge,” O’Leary said. But in the end, O’Leary and John said the product was still unproven. Harken said she was seeking partners and was creating a data fee model.

Two other ideas – a card shoe designed to prevent card marking and edge sorting from University of Nevada, Las Vegas student Brittney Martino, and Window Magic, from UNLV student Wayne Wittman, a product that would cover windows in high-end suites with transparent OLED displays, drew some interest from the judges.

Each presenter had 10 minutes to pitch their idea in front of the judges and a live audience inside the special event theater on the G2E tradeshow floor inside the Sands Expo and Convention Center.

Martino told the judges that the card shoe hadn’t been field trialed yet and the $10,000 prize would help establish a demonstration program and build additional units.

Window Magic elicited a few choice comments from O’Leary and John.

“Do I crush you like cockroaches now, or wait a few minutes,” said O’Leary, who was unimpressed with the presentation.

John said if the suites were in his hotel, he would much rather his guests be “downstairs getting bombed and buying hookers.”

Howard Stutz is the executive editor of CDC Gaming Reports. He can be reached at hstutz@cdcgamingreports.com. Follow @howardstutz on Twitter.