Sunscreenr looked like a genuinely useful product. A handheld UV camera that showed exactly where sunscreen was missing on skin — a real problem, a credible founder, and a deal struck with Kevin O’Leary on national television. Thousands of people backed it on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Then the shipments never came.
This article covers the full story — the pitch, the deal that fell apart, the crowdfunding controversy, and what founders can take away from the collapse.
What Sunscreenr Actually Was and Why It Got Attention
Sunscreenr was a handheld UV imaging device. When you looked through the lens, areas with sunscreen appeared darker. Spots where sunscreen was missing or had worn off appeared lighter.
The use case was straightforward and easy to understand. A parent applies sunscreen to a child at the beach, then uses the device to check whether they missed the back of the neck or shoulders. A surfer checks after a few hours in the water to see where the sunscreen has worn off. The visual feedback made the problem visible in a way that guessing never could.
Founder Dave Cohen held a Ph.D. in biophysics and biochemistry, which gave the product scientific credibility. The underlying problem is real — missed sunscreen spots are a genuine cause of burns and are linked to increased skin cancer risk. On paper, this was a well-positioned product with a clear, health-focused purpose.
The Season 8 Shark Tank Pitch and Kevin O’Leary’s Deal
Cohen appeared on Shark Tank Season 8, Episode 6 in 2016. He asked for $800,000 in exchange for 10% equity, putting the company’s valuation at $8 million.
Several sharks pushed back on that number. The valuation raised eyebrows, and concerns came up about market size and the cost of manufacturing a specialized optical device at a consumer price point. These are reasonable questions for any hardware startup, and Sunscreenr didn’t have clean answers to all of them.
Kevin O’Leary ultimately made an offer: $800,000 for 33.3% equity — a much larger stake than Cohen had offered. Cohen accepted the deal on air. But as anyone familiar with Shark Tank knows, on-air deals are not final. They depend on due diligence, and a lot can change once lawyers and accountants get involved.
Why the O’Leary Deal Never Closed
The deal did not survive due diligence. No major external investment ever came through, and O’Leary did not end up as an investor in Sunscreenr.
This happens regularly with Shark Tank deals. The televised handshake is not a signed term sheet. After the cameras stop rolling, investors take a closer look at intellectual property, cost structures, manufacturing realities, and potential liabilities. Any one of those areas can cause a deal to collapse — and frequently does.
For Sunscreenr, losing that capital had serious consequences. The company had no institutional backing to fall back on. Instead, it turned to crowdfunding and pre-orders to fund production — a much riskier path for a hardware product that required specialized manufacturing.
The Shark Tank appearance created real demand. But demand without working capital to fulfill it is not an asset — it becomes a liability.
The Kickstarter and Indiegogo Campaigns — Delays, Silence, and Backlash
Sunscreenr ran campaigns on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo and attracted a significant number of backers. People paid in advance based on the promise that devices would ship once production was completed.
Production delays stretched on repeatedly. The final Kickstarter update was posted on June 25, 2018 — nearly two years after the show aired — with Cohen claiming that shipments would go out that week.
They didn’t. Or at least not to most backers.
After that June 2018 update, complaints kept coming in. Backers reported never receiving their units, getting no replies to emails, and being unable to get refunds. Some filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau. The comment sections on crowdfunding pages turned hostile.
It’s worth noting that a small number of Sunscreenr units did appear as resale listings on eBay, which suggests some limited production did occur. But widespread fulfillment clearly never happened. Many people who paid in advance were left with nothing.
No formal legal judgments or documented fraud findings exist in the public record. But the practical outcome for most backers was the same: they paid, they waited, and they got no product and no refund.
How and When Sunscreenr Shut Down
There was no formal announcement. The company simply went quiet and stopped existing in any functional sense.
The Sunscreenr Instagram account posted for the last time on March 23, 2019. The Twitter account had gone inactive even earlier, around 2017. The sunscreenr.com website eventually went offline and the domain was repurposed — it now redirects to a felting and wool craft site, which tells you everything you need to know about the company’s current status.
Cohen’s LinkedIn shows he was CEO and founder of Voxelight, the company through which Sunscreenr was commercialized, from October 2015 to September 2022. He has since moved into a corporate role as a Staff Life Sciences Technology Manager at Plexus Corp, a firm that provides engineering and manufacturing support to help companies bring products to market. He is reported to have eventually removed Sunscreenr from his LinkedIn profile entirely.
Co-founder Jon Meyer is currently reported to be Chief Technology Officer at CAPTRUST. Both founders have moved on to established organizations, and Sunscreenr as a business is effectively gone.
Why Sunscreenr Failed: The Real Breakdown
There wasn’t a single cause. Several problems compounded over time.
The investment fell through with no backup plan
Losing the O’Leary deal left Sunscreenr without the capital it needed to scale manufacturing. Relying on crowdfunding to fund a specialized optical hardware product was always going to be risky. When delays hit, there was no financial cushion.
Hardware is harder than it looks
Consumer hardware is one of the most difficult categories to execute in. Sunscreenr wasn’t a simple product — it required specialized UV optics, electronics, enclosures, and quality control. Each of those steps adds cost, time, and risk. Crowdfunding timelines rarely account for that honestly.
Communication broke down at the worst time
When delays happen, backers can often accept it — if they’re kept informed and treated with respect. Sunscreenr stopped communicating. By the time the final Kickstarter update went up in June 2018, trust was already gone. The silence after that update made things significantly worse.
The valuation was hard to justify early on
Pitching at an $8 million valuation before achieving real sales volume created a gap between expectation and reality that the company never closed. It shaped how the business approached investment, crowdfunding targets, and timelines — and likely contributed to overcommitting before the manufacturing side was ready.
What Founders Can Take From This
Sunscreenr is a useful case study precisely because the product concept was solid. This wasn’t a bad idea. It was a failure of execution, funding strategy, and operational planning.
A few specific lessons worth paying attention to:
- TV exposure is not capital. Shark Tank gets you attention. It does not pay your manufacturing bills. Build your financial plan around what happens if the deal falls through — because it often does.
- Don’t oversell crowdfunding timelines. If you’re not certain you can manufacture and ship by a specific date, don’t promise it. Vague timelines with honest caveats are more trustworthy than confident dates you can’t hit.
- Hardware needs real manufacturing partnerships before you launch. Confirming that you can actually produce the product at scale — with a real supplier and realistic cost per unit — should happen before crowdfunding opens, not after.
- Keep communicating when things go wrong. Companies lose customers’ trust through silence, not setbacks. Regular honest updates — even bad news — preserve more goodwill than going quiet and hoping things improve.
If you’re building a hardware startup or evaluating a business that relies on crowdfunding, Daily Business Zone covers practical business strategy and real-world case studies worth following.
Final Thoughts
Sunscreenr had a real product, a credible founder, and a national television platform. None of that was enough to save it once the O’Leary deal collapsed and manufacturing delays started piling up.
The backers who paid in advance and received nothing are the clearest measure of what went wrong. The product concept may have been sound, but the business behind it couldn’t deliver — and when things got difficult, it stopped talking to the people who had trusted it with their money.
That’s the part other founders should remember most. Ideas are easy to pitch. Fulfilling what you promise is where businesses actually succeed or fail.
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