Whatever Happened To HoneyFund After Shark Tank? –

In 2014, Honeyfund had already raised over $200 million in honeymoon funds for their users, earning revenue of close to $1 million. Though couples could sign-up for free, the site offered package upgrades (read: more customization) for a fee, and had a partnership with PayPal that allowed them to take a small percentage of each collected donation. It cost roughly 88 cents for the company to acquire a new customer, we learn during the pitch, and that customer’s dollar value for the couple was, on average, around $9. 

Kevin O’Leary was skeptical of the company’s valuation, which was based on projections for 2015, and would require the company to grow — in a very short period of time — by a whopping 350 percent. In order to ensure he made his money back even if the company failed to take off, O’Leary offered the pair the $400,000 (sans equity), but on the condition that, in return, he received one-third of their transaction revenue until he made his initial investment back three-fold. In other words, as soon as Honeyfund was able to give $1.2m back to O’Leary, he’d swim away and leave them be.

Given the growth variable upon which their happily-ever-after relied, the couple would need Honeyfund’s year-old sister site, Plumfund (basically, a less specifically targeted Honeyfund) to start generating many more new customers, as well as a pile of revenue. To paraphrase shark Robert Herjavec, the pair’s plan for growing one fund was to attempt to grow…another fund. So, how’d that work out for them?