The show “Shark Tank” has highlighted plenty of exciting and promising products and concepts, from RigStrips ski and snowboard car mounts to the WaiveCar EV sharing service. Entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to venture capitalists, who decide whether or not to invest based on their confidence in how well the product will be received by the market. There’s one factor that all but guarantees success on the show — a product’s ability to solve problems. Such is the case with Creator Camp, a “Shark Tank” Season 16 idea that got backed on the show and has enjoyed rapid growth since its episode aired. 

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Creator Camp was founded to target excessive levels of screen time, which can interfere with important early stages of childhood development. The company promises to teach children tech skills so their screen time can be productive and educational rather than simply mind-numbing. The three entrepreneurs who presented the company to the sharks mentioned that children ages 8 to 12 average a whopping 8 hours of screen time per day — a statistic that made the sharks’ ears perk up. Instead of responding to this by removing tablets and phones from kids’ hands (which parents know to be a nearly impossible task), Creator Camp launched a network of short camps that teach digital skills like music and video production, game development, and animation. Here’s the story of Creator Camp since its appearance on “Shark Tank.”

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After getting the sharks’ attention by flagging the growing concern raised by the World Health Organization about screen time for young kids, the founders of Creator Camp launched into their multi-faceted approach to educational camps. All three presenters had technological backgrounds in areas like video production, animation, and design. By the time they landed on the show, the team had already hosted four years of summer camps, growing their revenue from $60,000 in the first year to $840,000 in the most recent year before their appearance. They asked for $350,000 from the sharks in exchange for a 5% stake in the company, a valuation that didn’t please the sharks. The largest complaint among potential investors was the lack of camp locations. 

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The founders of Creator Camp noted that they had thus far been limited to their home state of Texas, but were planning to expand to Washington D.C. due to interest after a feature in The Washington Post. Guest shark Rashaun Williams expressed that this projected growth was too slow to interest him, while other sharks said that they didn’t feel the deal aligned with their current business needs and interests. However, Barbara Corcoran was willing to make a deal as long as the founders promised to franchise their business to quicken their growth. After a back-and-forth negotiation, they settled on selling her an 18% stake for $350,000 with a commitment to franchise the Creator Camp concept.

Creator Camp’s appearance on “Shark Tank” Season 16 aired in 2024. Since then, the founders have made good on their desire to expand to the Washington, D.C. area: the camp’s 2025 offerings include one at Washington’s Temple Academy, as well as camps in Bethesda, Maryland, Destin, Florida and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Some of these new additions are made possible by partnerships between Creator Camp and schools and local organizations, who are helping spread its curriculum across North America.

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Another evolving piece of the Creator Camp business that’s worth noting is its online courses. The Creator Camp website now advertises two different six-week Zoom workshops for YouTube creation and Roblox Game Coding. The most recent online course began in February 2025, indicating that these offerings might be year-round. This makes them more scalable because they aren’t limited to summer vacations or dependent on finding the right location for an in-person camp. While there’s no confirmation that the online component was a direct response to the sharks’ feedback, it seems that this is a clear step toward Barbara Corcoran’s larger goal of scaling the company.

As the summer camp season draws closer, the Creator Camp founders seem to be focused on drawing more children ages 6-13 to its summer camp offerings. The website has new deals to entice campers. There are savings for anyone who books a 3-day camp and 2-day camp in the same week, sibling discounts, and a pass for $1,599 that allows a child to attend unlimited camps for the summer. The Creator Camp social media pages have under 5,000 followers combined but are full of positive reviews from parents and kids alike. There’s also an endearing commercial for the 2025 season that suggests growing interest in and loyalty to the camps.

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As for the growth that some of the sharks said they’d like to see, Creator Camp seems well on its way to achieving this. The website boasts of 1,500 summer spots already being filled as of March 2025 and also has a partnerships page where organizations can apply to become franchisees of Creator Camp. “While the process is still underway,” the site reads, “we’re excited to connect with individuals who share our vision and want to be part of this incredible journey.” It seems that locations across North America have been able to apply and sign up to host the camps, leading to its growth in 2025.