Akeem Shannon

At 15 Akeem Shannon was bullied for being different; at 19 he flunked out Howard University; at 23 he was committed to a mental hospital; and at 28 he appeared on Shark Tank, after which he was able to scale his business, Flipstik, to $10+ million, and convince Snoop Dogg he was a branding genius. Determined to redeem himself after dropping out of Howard, where he was on full scholarship, he worked at several Fortune 500 companies and a major FinTech company where he was a top sales associate. He made a great living but was not fulfilled. Akeem’s uncle, a NASA engineer, told him about a reusable adhesive based on the feet of geckos that NASA had developed in the 1970s. This would lead to Flipstik, a gravity-defying phone accessory. In 2018 Akeem taught himself to write a patent, file trademarks and launched his product on Kickstarter. The next few years would be a journey of ups and downs. He applied to Shark Tank in 2019 but after months of talks with producers, was not selected to appear on the show. He participated in a music competition that ultimately helped him land a deal with a business mogul who would introduce him to executives at AT&T and to the Rapper Snoop Dogg. They would help him connect with the Shark Tank producers in 2020 and he finally landed a spot on the show. In 2022 Flipstik would grow 1000% landing distribution nationwide in Target, BestBuy, AT&T, T-Mobile, QVC, and others. The device is now sold in over 3000 retailers and launched five new products in 2023. Akeem works as a volunteer mentor and biz coach at Big Brother Big Sister, UMSL Accelerate, Arch Grants, and NFTE. He also partnered with The Brookings Institute on the Olin Brookings Commission to level the playing field in Venture capital for unrepresented minorities and women. Akeem's story was featured at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s “Cellphone: Unseen Connections” exhibition in Washington, and in INC Magazine's top 50 fastest growing consumer product companies in 2023.