Startup ‘Morning Head’ Will Make a Shark Tank Appearance

Photo via Morning Head on Facebook

If Max Valverde is lucky, “Morning Head” will be in every household across the country real soon.

Airing on March 21, Valverde will appear on national television before the panel of judges on the popular startup investor show Shark Tank on ABC, and pitch his hair-wetting, bed head-curing product in hopes of securing funding to push his business plan forward.

“I can’t get too deep into it. But I can say it was tons of fun, and it’s a great show and I’m excited to be a part of it,” said Valverde of taping for the show. Valverde invented Morning Head two years ago and has since sold 8,000 caps in 45 countries. “At the end of the day, when seven million people who like new products, and companies, and gadgets watch a show like this, it’s definitely going to cause a major spike [in sales]. The hope is that it’s not a one or two-day spike, but a good three weeks where we capture it and go semi-viral.”

Morning Head, a shower cap-like product that absorbs water before it’s placed on a user’s head to fix their messy hair, was first introduced to the market through Kickstarter in 2012. Valverde, a Needham resident who works in Boston, took a chance when launching his idea online, but quickly raised six times what he had expected to make using the crowdfunding site.

Morning Head is meant to be a solution to people’s unmanageable hair when they first wake up and roll out of bed. Rather than take a shower, users can quickly soak the cap, put it on, ruffle it around for a few seconds, and then style their hair without taking a shower or dipping their head under the sink.

While Valverde’s product has seen some sales, he’s hoping that his appearance on Shark Tank, in front of investors like Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful, will help him turn his small side project into a full-blown business. “The dream and the hope is that Morning Head becomes a household name. It’s got that tongue-in-cheek, double entendre, and I hope that becomes ubiquitous among American households. It has a funny name, and obviously we play up the marketing, but it’s a great product that actually works,” he said.

Valverde was tight-lipped about what happens on the episode that he’ll appear in later this month, but he said his audition for the show was first filmed back in September, and he learned from a recent telephone call from the show’s producers that he’d be on national television. “I’m super pumped. I really am,” he said, adding that he beat out roughly 40,000 other people that tried to make it on the show.

When asked about the brand name and the judges’ reactions to it, he said people will simply have to tune in to find out what happens. “Anything involving Morning Head is always enjoyable,” he quipped.