The pitch
What walked into the Den
Grobikes, Marc Weatherill’s subscription service that swaps kids’ bikes as children outgrow them, appeared in season 20, episode 14, out of Toronto. Search coverage puts subscriptions at a low monthly fee.
Wanted to raise $400,000 for a share of 20 percent, which valued the brand at about $2,000,000.
After the show
What happened next
The deal unknowable from the broadcast, we checked the here-and-now instead.
Current status is unsettled. Our direct fetches of the Grobikes site returned errors on repeated tries, which can mean bot-blocking rather than a dead business, and company records on LinkedIn, Facebook and business directories still read as active. Because we could not load a working storefront ourselves, we mark this one unverified rather than closed.
Our read
The Hub verdict
The ask is confident for a subscription model: four hundred thousand offered against a fifth of the business, pricing at two million a service that swaps kids' bikes as children grow. Subscription pitches lean on recurring-revenue promise, which is what a number like this really prices.
The room’s decision never surfaced publicly, so only the ask is gradable. Status is where this one gets honest: repeated page loads failed, which reads more like bot-blocking than a shuttered company, while directory records still show it active. Signals pulling in opposite directions do not make a verdict, so we log the brand unverified rather than closed, and we say why out loud.
A recurring-revenue valuation with a status we left open.
Worth knowing: Failed page loads are not proof a company is gone, so we hold the status open rather than call it either way.
