BOZEMAN, Mont. — Two Bozeman creators are set to appear on ABC’s “Shark Tank” with a device they built to help people exit awkward conversations.
Adam Lamb, who serves as an HOA president for a neighborhood in Bozeman, explained that frequent extended visits from neighbors helped spark the idea.
Lamb said he had previously relied on his wife to call him when he needed a way out of a conversation. That workaround eventually turned into the Bye Bye Button.
“If she saw somebody coming in, she’d call me and I’d say like, ‘Oh sorry I better take this.’ And pretty soon while we were working on other projects we were like ‘We can do this, we can build this, we can make it ring on our own,’” Lamb said.
“Then friends started saying, ‘Oh man, I either want one of these, or I know someone that needs this,'” co-creator Dan Barnes added.
Lamb and Barnes work together through their consumer electronics company, which gave them the tools and experience to make the device.
The Bye Bye Button is a discrete device that looks like a car key fob or a garage door opener. The user downloads a smartphone app and pairs the device. When the button is clicked for three seconds, their phone vibrates to confirm the connection, then a few moments later the phone receives a fake phone call.
When they were first making the device, getting on the show actually came up.
“We thought, ‘Someday, this would be awesome to have on Shark Tank,'” Barnes said.
“We joked around about reaching out to them, but we had no idea how hard it would have actually been to get on, had we had to go through the process,” Lamb added.
Barnes and Lamb typically sell their devices or license them out, but with the Bye Bye Button they decided to try marketing the device themselves.
The creators said a TikTok post helped put them on “Shark Tank’s” radar. They said producers found the device there and reached out by email.
“We had posted it on TikTok and the producers had found it on TikTok, and we got an email, and we both thought it was totally fake,” Barnes said.
But they responded and found out the messages were real. After connecting with producers, they spent several months developing their pitch for the Sharks.
The process for taping the show was fun and included a lot more work than they expected, Barnes said.
“The people when we actually got to film with them were all incredibly friendly and encouraging, and the process itself wasmore laid back than I expected when we were actually in the tank,” Lamb said.
“Shark Tank” has featured other successful products that became household names, like the Scrub Daddy and Squatty Potty.
Lamb and Barnes said they felt a little nervous to see how the episode turns out, but they are also excited.
“It’s exhilarating and it’s also terrifying if we’re like, the one company that doesn’t get the massive bump,” Lamb said. “We’ve been humbled enough in learning how to market that we’re probably both honestly a little terrified of like, is it going to go really well, are we going to get good results? Or is it going to be like…” he said, blowing a raspberry and giving a thumbs-down.
The creative duo has other similar products in the development phase, like the Rescue Ring. You can learn about other products and devices they have created here.
The Bye Bye Button is available in the App Store and Google Play Store, and is available on Amazon, or through their website.