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The nicest shark in Eureka Park
A lot of people at CES know Mindy Zemrak. On Thursday, she strode no further than five meters into Eureka Park, the show's startup section, when someone heard her voice and turned around. It was Dmitri Love, founder of a crypto-investment platform called Bundil that appeared on the TV show Shark Tank two seasons ago and earned an investment from Kevin O'Leary. Zemrak is the head of casting, and hence the main gatekeeper, for Shark Tank. She has been with the show, where budding entrepreneurs make their best pitches to a panel of business giants, from its very first season until now, when it's preparing for its 12th. For the past few years, the start of every season's casting has begun here, with a trip to CES.
Omni VR treadmill gets $3 million in seed funding
Following Virtuix's announcement earlier this month that its virtual reality treadmill will arrive in July for its early adopters, the company revealed this morning that it received seed funding. Virtuix received $3 million to "expand production and distribution of the Omni," the $500 platform that has players strapping in to a harness and wearing special shoes to run, walk and jump using their real-life legs in games. The seed investment round was led by Tekton Ventures and Maveron. One of the other investors onboard with the Omni is Radical Investments, a venture capital firm founded by Mark Cuban. Virtuix took a trip to the entrepreneurial ABC reality television series Shark Tank, which Cuban stars on, in an episode that aired in December. In it, Cuban pointed out that Virtuix's Omni is "pretty much based around Oculus Rift" and that "as Oculus Rift goes, you guys go." Virtuix valued its idea at $20 million, which Cuban and the rest of the cast didn't buy into. "I could see you creating 20 million in sales, 25 million in sales with this, but you're competing just like headsets are going to be competing," he said. "You haven't told me that there's a way to get to 50 million in sales." Given Facebook's recent acquisition of Oculus VR for $2 billion, which was cleared by the FTC this week, Cuban now appears to see more hope for the Omni. Aside from private investors, the other groups that funded Virtuix's efforts this week are Scentan Ventures, Scout Ventures and StartCaps Ventures. [Image: Virtuix]
