Matt Mundt ’14, who made a splash with his Sleep Pod by Hug Sleep last fall on ABC TV’s televised Shark Tank program, returns to the show on March 12 for a rare same season follow up story. Their first appearance led to a bidding war between all five sharks and they left the Tank with $300,000 in exchange for 20% ownership from new business partners Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner. “The show changed our lives,” Mundt said.  

Within the broadcast’s first weeks, Hug Sleep sold 50,000 units. (They were told to expect to sell between 2,500 and 5,000 units.) That and subsequent orders led to $4 million in sales in the final months of 2020, growing Hug Sleep by ten times. To put this in perspective, their local manufacturer hired nearly a dozen employees to keep up with demand and production fabric used was enough to cover 34 football fields. 

In their follow-up appearance on Shark Tank, Mundt and Kupper will announce the launch of the second generation of their product, which now includes three additional sizes (kids, tweens and extra-large), applies more pressure across the body, and a new patent-pending design allowing users to stick both legs outside of the Sleep Pod instead of just one.