What happened to iCPooch from Shark Tank Season 6?

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If it were up to many of us, every day would be Take Your Dog to Work Day. Leaving your dog home alone for hours can be tough on both you and your pet, especially for dogs with separation anxiety. Thanks to the ever-evolving field of pet technology, there’s a solution that can help owners stay connected to their furry friends no matter where they are. The iCPooch is a device that lets owners spend face-to-face time with their dogs. Users can download a companion app to their phone or tablet and mount it to the front of the device. From there, you can set it up anywhere your pet can easily reach and initiate a video call at any time. You can also press a button on the app that allows the device to dispense a treat.

The iCPooch was conceived when inventor Brooke Martin was just 12 years old. The Washington inventor was inspired by her golden retriever Kayla, who suffered from severe separation anxiety when left alone. Discovering that this was a common problem among pets, Martin decided to develop the iCPooch, presenting it at Startup Weekend Spokane 2012, where she won against nearly 40 adults.

This helped her further develop the technology and allowed her to build a team that included CEO James Pelland and industrial designer Jeff Bendio. iCPooch gained exposure in media outlets like CBS, Huffpost, and TechCrunch, to name a few, which helped draw attention to its 2014 Kickstarter campaign. The campaign was a success, raising nearly $30,000 toward its $20,000 goal.

What happened to iCPooch on Shark Tank?

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Brooke Martin and James Pelland came to Shark Tank hoping to get a $150,000 investment for a 20% stake in iCPooch. They presented the device to a dog named Yo-yo, whose owner called and gave him a treat. The iCPooch sold for $149, and it cost $60 to make. They sold 115 units in the two months since its launch. The product was available on Amazon, and the first shipment was expected to go to Bed Bath & Beyond.

Robert Herjavec wondered what would motivate a dog to go on a video call. Martin says she learned at a dog trainer conference that many trainers use Skype to conduct lessons. Kevin O’Leary has his own concerns about the design. He thinks it looks too much like a fire hydrant and that dogs will pee on it. Pelland said they plan to improve the design, assuring the Sharks that they have not received any complaints of this type from customers, nor have they experienced anything like it during testing.

Unfortunately, this did little to calm the sharks’ fears, citing anecdotal sales figures as the main reason for their concern. Mark Cuban thought the device would be difficult to sell, considering it would require an additional smartphone or tablet to leave at home all day. O’Leary and Daymond John were concerned that the device could potentially worsen behavioral problems in dogs with anxiety, with the former going so far as to say, “I really hate this idea.” Despite the disagreement, the sharks still praised Martin for coming this far at her age.

iCPooch after Shark Tank

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While it’s not one of the most brutal “Shark Tank” attacks in the vein of Amber or Ionic Ear, it’s definitely rare for investors to attack a child entrepreneur to the extent they did to Brooke Martin. Even on the night of the episode’s first airing on March 20, 2015, O’Leary tweeted, “I hate everything about this! Count. Me. Out,” echoing his closing remarks about iCPooch in the segment. Despite remaining calm throughout the episode, Martin admitted to being intimidated. “It was so intense,” she told The Spokesman-Review shortly after the episode aired. “I think you learn a lot more from failure, so to speak, than from success.”

Still, that didn’t stop her from continuing to work on the iCPooch. Before it aired, she and her team ramped up production and redesigned their website in anticipation of the influx of traffic and sales. While exact sales numbers are unknown right after Shark Tank, it’s been reported that thousands of units were sold in the years that followed, indicating that the product had found its audience. This was likely helped by lowering the price from $149.99 to $129.99.

Much like she did before Shark Tank, Martin received numerous notable accolades after her time on the show. These included winning 2nd place in the 2015 Microsoft Small Business Contest, being named a 2015 Appreneur Scholar by the Consumer Electronics Show, and receiving the Inventions We Love award from Geekwire Tech Summit.

Why did iCPooch go out of business?

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Unfortunately, despite the promise iCPooch showed after “Shark Tank,” the company’s days were numbered. iCPooch went out of business in 2017, with founder Brooke Martin citing issues with outsourcing and product design. “We would have had to redesign the technology and the device,” she told the Spokane Journal of Business in 2022. “We did our best to connect existing customers with a competitor that had a similar product.”

Despite the outcome, Martin still supports the face-to-face conversations with dogs and is grateful for the whole experience. “The iCPooch is probably still the defining experience of my young life,” she told the Spokane Journal of Business. “I learned so much from angel investors, patent attorneys and entrepreneurs in Spokane that it gave me a lot of motivation.” The same technology that went into the iCPooch was used in Martin’s next invention, the iC LovedOnes, a device that allowed lonely seniors to video chat with loved ones while also acting as a remote medication dispenser. It was introduced in 2015 but doesn’t seem to have taken off much further.

As of this writing, the only evidence of iCPooch’s existence online is its Instagram account, which hasn’t been updated since 2015, as its official website simply states, “Due to unforeseen circumstances, iCPooch has ceased all operations and production.” The app itself has received mixed to negative reviews with an average rating of three stars on the Amazon Appstore. Customers have described the app as working inconsistently, with some of their dogs not being interested in it, while others have been upset that the app has stopped working altogether after the company closed.

What are the next plans of the iCPooch founder?

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The Sharks may have had some harsh things to say about iCPooch, but among the more positive words was Lori Greiner’s near the end of the segment, where she noted, “The best part about this is that you’re 14 years old and you’ve already come up with one pretty clever idea. I can’t imagine what you’re going to do in the next dozen or so years.” As it turns out, that comment made a lot of sense.

To say that Brooke Martin has been busy since her appearance on Shark Tank would be an understatement. Shortly after iCPooch closed, she was accepted to Stanford University. There, she earned a bachelor’s degree in management science and engineering, and later returned to earn a master’s in the same subject. After graduating in 2022, she worked at Floodgate, a California venture capital firm that specializes in early seed funding and resource allocation for start-up entrepreneurs.

In September 2024, she announced her departure from Floodgate and return to the world of entrepreneurship. Her latest venture is Friends Know Best, which Martin says is “…a social platform that unlocks collective intelligence by enabling curation and feedback among friends. By mapping human tastes and preferences, FKB aims to amplify trusted and authentic knowledge, simplify decision-making, and nurture our most meaningful relationships.” It received early funding from Floodgate and is currently building its team.