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Watch: Shark Tank Guest Secures €50k Investment For Digital Receipts App – Even After Shushing Christabelle

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With the fourth episode of Shark Tank Malta’s second season in the books, a digital receipts app – SLIPZ – owned by Maltese and South African Entrepreneur Garth Metrovich has received €50,000 despite a few rocky moments.

Garth Metrovich – who is the great-great-great grandson of Giorgio Mitrovich, a Maltese politician who played a significant role in the struggle for a Maltese free press in the 1800s – is on a mission to “eradicate the printing of paper receipts and save the planet”. 

Metrovich was looking for an investment of €50,000 for 5% of the company.

“SLIPZ sends digital receipts from a waypoint to a mobile device via QR code scanning, eliminating the need for paper receipts,” explained SLIPZ’s owner and founder.

“In the UK alone 11.2 billion paper receipts are printed annually. That equates to 10 million trees being chopped down just to produce paper receipts.”

SLIPZ is available on both iOS and Android, and already had 10,000 users at the time of this pitch.

According to its founder, “users can scan paper receipts, upload PDFs from their email inbox, enter data – and forward receipts and accounting to accountants and yourself, in CSV, Excel and JPEG formats”.

Despite its fairly wide reach, the app had not yet made any money – but Garth had an explanation for this, and a plan to change it soon.

“My app is free. I’m trying to grow the app. I don’t think you want to download an app and already start paying for it, and already start seeing ads. You first want to know that you love the app.” 

With investment from one of the sharks, his priorities would be securing monetisation through “software licensing fees for retailers and subscription models with additional accounting features”.

While the app can currently be used to its full capacity for free, ad-free, he added that the future “freemium model will have advertising”.

Although sharks were impressed by the idea, depth of presented information, and the product itself – the pitch had a few rocky moments.

When Alex Fenech mentioned in passing that he has often found himself throwing receipts for retail expenses away, Garth jokingly answered “as a businessman, you should not throw away your receipts, you should use SLIPZ”.

Fenech did not appear to be particularly amused, and responded, “I don’t claim expenses. I’m an honest businessman.”

Perhaps the most significant bump in the path came when Christabelle Camilleri – a lone woman in a room full of men – was trying to discuss the app’s features with Fenech.

Her conversation was cut off when Garth snapped his fingers, held one to his lips, and said “Christabelle, shush.”

Three sharks had already dropped out as potential investors, and Camilleri remained civil – but was clearly put off. 

“To be honest, when I was shushed, I was trying to discuss your app’s features, and how I can integrate them with my system, but I was shushed. So I’m out,” she said. 

Despite these moments, furnishing tycoon Dino Fino was not dissuaded from proposing a counter-offer of €50k in exchange for 25% of the company.

Metrovich briefly considered the offer which would give away 20% more of SLIPZ than initially proposed – before accepting.

“I can do that, yes. Thank you so much.”

Tag someone who should take a moment to digitise their receipts

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Pawlu is a journalist interested in Race, Environmental Issues, Music, Migration and Skate Culture. Pawlu loves to swim everyday and believes that cars are an inadequate solution to our earthly woes. You can get in touch at [email protected]

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