Notehall - Shark Tank Update

D.J. Stephan and Sean Conway, two college students from Arizona State University, brought an unusually compelling story to Shark Tank Season 1 with Notehall, the peer-to-peer class note-sharing platform they had built while still enrolled.

Conway's inspiration was deeply personal: diagnosed with ADHD, he had genuine difficulty keeping comprehensive notes during lectures and recognized that other students with similar challenges - and even those without - could benefit from access to high-quality, well-organized class notes produced by their most diligent peers. Stephan brought technical and entrepreneurial complementarity to Conway's core insight, and together they built a website that allowed students to upload their notes and earn money when classmates downloaded them, creating a two-sided marketplace directly within the university ecosystem.

The traction they demonstrated was remarkable for a student-run startup: at Arizona State and Kansas State universities, 40% of the entire student body had registered for and used the platform, generating $30,000 in revenue from 6,000 paying customers - meaning students were willing to pay real money for access to better notes. The pitch attracted intense competition among the investors, who recognized a genuine technology business with low capital requirements and high margin potential.

After a heated bidding process in which multiple sharks made competing offers, Conway and Stephan accepted Barbara Corcoran's offer of $90,000 for 25% equity.

In one of Shark Tank Season 1's most consequential post-show turns, Stephan and Conway ultimately declined Barbara Corcoran's investment offer after further due diligence following filming. Their decision was driven by a competing opportunity that offered a stronger strategic foundation: admission to the DreamIT Ventures accelerator program in Philadelphia, one of the most respected early-stage venture programs in the country.

The accelerator provided them with the mentorship, investor network, and operational infrastructure to scale Notehall far beyond what a single angel investment would have enabled. The decision proved inspired.

With DreamIT's backing and guidance, Stephan and Conway executed a systematic university-by-university rollout, expanding Notehall to 54 institutions and growing the registered user base to 750,000 students across the country. At that scale, Notehall became a genuinely compelling acquisition target for the student services industry.

In 2012, Chegg.com - the publicly traded student services platform known for textbook rentals and academic support tools - acquired Notehall for an undisclosed amount that made both founders millionaires and represented one of the most successful acquisition exits of any company from Shark Tank's first season. Both founders subsequently built successful careers on the foundation of that exit: Brian Duggan went on to found and lead Livly as CEO, while Adam McCombs became Chief Product Officer at Vantaca, LLC, demonstrating the compounding value of making the right strategic call about partnership at a critical inflection point in a fast-growing startup.