On the May 13th episode 1124 of Shark Tank, mcSquares CEO Anthony Franco pitched a radical improvement on centuries-old techniques for drawing on surfaces to communicate ideas and build community.
The Sharks loved our products because they...
→ make collaboration effective and easy.
→ promote organization through analog thinking.
→ are simple and eco-friendly.
In celebration of his appearance on the show, M.C. Squares is offering free shipping on all orders. 
Our appearance on Shark Tank is just the most recent validation of what we like to call “The Art of Whiteboarding” – even before the episode aired, we were seeing a 600% growth in sales in Q1 2020 due to an enthusiastic response from people like you.
Here are three reasons we believe why M.C. Squares’ eco-friendly product offerings are gaining in relevance:
1. The M.C. Squares family of products make collaboration effective and easy.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, M.C. Squares were already widely used for communication, organization, collaboration and teaching in physical spaces. With the need for social distancing, our tools have found an increasing relevance as teachers, students and professionals connect with each other through collaboration technologies like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Zoom.
Take the example of Sarah Smith. Sarah is a third grade Denver Public Schools teacher and curriculum developer. Post-pandemic, Sarah has found the M.C. Squares Stickies and Surfaces indispensable while remotely teaching her class of 25 students. Smith gives a recent example of trying to teach students how to draw and analyze scales for bar graphs.
“Many of the children were struggling to draw the graphs on their Chromebooks,” Sarah told us. “On Google Meet, I was able to quickly sketch the graph on a M.C. Squares Surface and hold it up to the camera. My students were easily able to see what the correct solution was and emulate my graph at home. Be it with Math or spelling, children often learn by identifying shapes and patterns -- there’s a reason blackboards have been around for all these years.”
Sarah plans to continue using M.C. Squares Stickies and Surfaces whiteboards when the social distancing guidelines lapse and schools resume as normal. And she’s not alone. Business users like so many of you have echoed Sarah’s experience on our website with product reviews like “Tiles have made working from home during the pandemic a breeze.”
2. "Analog” thinking is better. Period.
Beyond working and schooling at home, whiteboarding techniques are instrumental to organizing ideas at a fundamental, human level. This remains true in an era where we can often feel compelled to record every thought or idea with a keyboard or a stylus.
It’s why product designers love our products. To give just one example, for over twenty years, Jason Belaire, IDSA, founder of Belworld Creative, INC, a Denver based innovation consultancy, has designed products for brands like Columbia, Swiss Gear Outdoor Camping, 5 Horizons and Cabelas.
“It’s human nature to compartmentalize ideas into different categories, so that we can act on them,” Jason said. “Organizing information in analog ways on M.C. Squares allows me to move between thoughts in real-time, in a way that I couldn't do by relying solely on technology.”
3. Our products are simple and eco-friendly.
The Sharks were impressed by the wide range of our offerings. We offer reusable sticky notes, desktop whiteboards and collaborative dry-erase Tiles that turn any room, virtual or physical, into a collaborative environment. Providing surfaces to draw, write and share ideas, their Stickies product family stick to shiny surfaces without any adhesive, and can be reused as many as two-thousand times each. Paper sticky notes consume an estimated 250,000 trees a year; M.C. Squares also plants a tree for every order placed on Amazon or their website.
As was evident from the Shark Tank appearance, our CEO Anthony Franco is passionate about creating tools that people can leverage for their own enjoyment and enrichment of the world around them. Having sold his user experience design firm, EffectiveUI, in 2012 to WPP, he has a proven track record for predicting and building stellar experiences that incorporate tons of end-user feedback. He understands the power of observing behavior, watching and learning how people like to work and interact with the world around them to provide innovative solutions they may not even know they need. M.C. Squares is a culmination of all this experience. Earning a coveted spot on Shark Tank and seeing explosive growth in sales this last year is an affirmation of Anthony’s passion and vision.
“Technology has its benefits. After all, we are using technology to cure cancer, build quantum computers, and one day, inhabit Mars,” says Franco. “But technology can also make you feel overwhelmed or distracted. And that’s why when we come up with the cure for cancer or build a quantum computer, you can bet there will have been a whiteboard in the room at every step along the way. But why stop at the workplace? With M.C. Squares, we want you to experience that joy that comes from being collaborative and creative right in your home.”
