Pleasanton’s Jeff Cohen walked away from a million dollar offer in the first season of “Shark Tank” and earned the ire of one of the “sharks” who proclaimed in the episode that Cohen was “dead to me.”
“He told me I would burn in hell for not taking the offer,” Cohen says with a chuckle.
Instead, Cohen returned in the second season in an update marking the success of his company and taped an episode in the third season, which never aired and includes a bigger offer.
He went back for a third shot, and that airs this Friday.
The ABC series allows entrepreneurs to get a panel of investors to put out cash in support of their products.
Cohen’s the entrepreneur behind the Livermore-based company Voyage-Air Guitar, Inc., which manufactures the first and only patented folding guitars. When he and his son first went on the ABC reality show in 2009, the company had just a few months under its belt.
Now the company boasts a million-plus in sales and growing. The guitars are now in the hands of artists from Brad Paisley to Paul McCartney.
The guitars were featured on an episode of “Glee” and on ABC’s new series “Nashville” — and Cohen even scored an extra gig in the pilot episode.
Cohen’s going back in the tank for an unprecedented third appearance on the series. While you can watch the episode in the comfort of your own home at 9 p.m. Friday Nov. 9 on ABC, the place to be on Friday is at The Vine theater in Livermore, where Cohen will be doing a Q&A before the show and during breaks while “Shark Tank” airs on the big screen.
Oh, and you’ll get a shot at winning a Voyage guitar.
Guitars aren’t the only business Cohen has his fingers in. He confesses to being “bored easily. Luckily, I have the good kind of ADD.”
His other companies include Halt Medical, Inc., which he co-founded in 2005. The company just received approval through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a non-invasive device that can destroy fibroid tumors in woman.
He recently attended a wedding and began talking to a woman about what he does for a living.
“I thought she said ‘My husband is a musician,’ so I told her I had a guitar company. And she said, ‘No. A physician.’ And I said ‘I have a medical company,’ “ Cohen says. “Three weeks ago, I was in the green room on the set of ‘Glee,’ and today I’m at a medical convention. Life is always interesting.”
9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 9
Doors open at 8:45 p.m. but meet and greet with the Voyage-Air Guitar Guys is at 8:30 p.m. in the lobby.
Tickets are $5 each and space is limited.
