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Shark Tank

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10 Sep, 2015

Business Insider interview

Interview0 Comments

Carter is interviewed by Business Insider. On why he originally turned down Shark Tank:

Originally I passed on doing it and I went home and I talked to my wife about it, and I ended up coming back around…What we thought about is that you can’t be it if you can’t see it. There’s not a lot of black entrepreneurs and I can’t sit there and bitch about diversity in tech and all of those things about access and pipeline if I’m not out there doing something about that…I’m watching the riots in Baltimore, I’m watching Ferguson, I’m watching Blacklivesmatter, I’m watching Jesse Jackson berate Silicon Valley. There’s just all these conversations around race, diversity, and tech. That’s what kind of gave me this shift where I said “It’s time that I do something and lend my voice.”

On working on the show:

You know what, I’ve gained a tremendous amount of respect for the sharks. I don’t know how they do their day jobs and do what they do on Shark Tank. It was definitely competitive for sure, and you get into some really deep negotiations. Luckily once I realized, “Ok, this is what I do every day” I got into my comfort zone. The biggest surprise for me was the length of the negotiations. The producers and editors do a really good job of what can sometimes be an hour and a half-negotiation and edit it down to a seven-minute segment.