By Patricia Downing, TeleTravel CEO, @pencakespost

Would you dip your delicious toes into the Shark Tank? That’s exactly what I did. And they were chewed mercilessly.

If you don’t already know, Shark Tank is a popular television show where budding entrepreneurs compete for an investment from one of the Sharks. Sharks are financially successful entrepreneurs thanks to hard work, sacrifice, and blessings from the gods of Capitalism.

I walked into the studio. Business professional, sweating, shaking with anxiety. Harsh lights, cameras filming your every move. The Sharks sit, arms crossed, notepads ready, and stoically judge.

“Sharks,” I said, flashing the smile I had practiced a hundred times in the mirror. “Do you ever find yourself on an alcohol-fueled depressive episode at a dilapidated bar across town? Do you experience a moment of clarity in the alcoholic haze and desire to go home and see your dog, Lucky? You normally would use ride share apps like Uber or Lyft. These apps can take tens of minutes, or even hours, to get a vehicle in time. By the time an Uber or Lyft arrives, you could be unconscious on the bar floor being kicked by a biker guy with a mole you made fun of.”

By this point, my pitch was failing. I could tell. One Shark shook their head in boredom. Another Shark closed their notepad and said the stabbing words: “I’m out.” The Shark was no longer an interested investor to jumpstart my dreams.

Those words stabbed my heart like a knife. My speech stumbled. A slight dizziness enveloped me. Still, I retained composure. It was at that moment I realized I had been standing with a frozen smile similar to Jack Nicholson’s Joker for about two minutes.

“My app, called TeleTravel, utilizes your cellphone for convenient travel services. Driver and vehicle not required.”

Yes! The Sharks leaned forward, interested.

“All with the simple press of a button, you can be travel from the bar to home in an instant!”

In hindsight, this was a poor way to conclude my pitch. The world of entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. It requires grit, patience, and lots of Adderall.

One of the Sharks threw up their hands. The Shark who I admired for years. “What does your product do, exactly?”

“Listen,” another Shark said. “You said ‘travel in an instant’, what does that mean? I can be home in ten minutes? Can I get from New York City to Los Angeles in five seconds using your app?” The other Sharks laughed, shaking their heads.

“Yes,” I said.

The Sharks stared, dumbfounded. “Enough metaphors!” one of the Sharks said. “Demonstrate your product!”

“I can’t demonstrate it here,” I chuckled, nervously.

“I don’t expect a taxi to drive through the window. Just show the app.”

At this point, I received what I had intended earlier: amusement. The Sharks were chuckling, jabbing, and hollering.

I handed the Shark my cellphone. “I’ll show you how it works,” I said.

The Shark put on reading glasses. TeleTravel: Where Would You Like to Go?

The Shark humorously typed in: Andromeda Galaxy. Before I could stop his curious finger, it tapped on TRAVEL.

The fabric of space and time ripped, contorted, and spiraled out of control. Everyone screamed. The producers cried as they thought about their plummeting ratings. The Sharks, now floating in a portion of the fourth dimension invisible for those still in the third dimension, grumbled and sighed.

The Shark who had pressed the TRAVEL button formed a triangle with his hands and leaned forward. “This is a sham of a product! I asked to travel to the Andromeda Galaxy and instead we’re floating as fourth dimensional entities. For this reason: I’m out.”

The other Sharks followed in quick succession.

“As effective as curing cancer with TeleHealth,” a Shark quipped.

“Get out of here,” my hero Shark growled at me, snarling teeth.

Tears in my eyes, I moped to the large golden doors I had entered earlier, except now the doors represented despair rather than opportunity. The cameras swiveled. I prayed this episode would never air and I could suffer this defeat alone.

For all you budding entrepreneurs: remember to keep going. You won’t do what I did and rip apart space and time. Maybe your hero will still tell you to ‘get out of my face’. If so, return later to rub success in it.

Some setbacks turn out to be blessings in disguise. After the incident on Shark Tank, I developed TeleTravel 2.0, a new app that allows inter-dimensional teleportation as well travel within our familiar dimension. So, in the end, I guess I did enter, and exit, through the doors of opportunity.

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Patricia Downing is a renown entrepreneur tackling the multiverse’s problems with Capitalist innovation. She grew TeleTravel from a small, one-person company headquartered in her garage to an inter-dimensional behemoth, employing trillions of creatures. Patricia currently lives on an orbiting gated community around the black hole Sirius A*1+1 with her husband Blacamovarokchius and three children.