Flock around the television next week — a smart birdhouse created in Seattle is going to be featured on an episode of “Shark Tank.”
Bird lovers, design geeks and fans of mini-success stories should get a kick out of “The Peep Show,” a stylish home that has room for nesting birds and a camera to watch it all happen.
Steve Gray began making the birdhouses as a passion project during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Four years later he’s landed a coveted spot on season 15 of ABC’s hit reality show, where he’ll pitch the idea to potential investors on Feb. 16.
According to USA Today, on average, the show receives 35,000 to 40,000 applicants each season. Of those, about 1,000 advance to a second round of vetting. Gray couldn’t share details about the taped episode or how he did, but he did express how thrilled he was to make the cut.
“You just hear time and time again, ‘Oh, you should audition for ‘Shark Tank,'” Gray said. “It is such a remote goal, such an impossibility. There wasn’t a whole lot of reasoning behind it, other than, ‘Why the heck wouldn’t ya?'”
The Peep Show is not your garden-variety boxy bird dwelling. Gray is a longtime designer who purposefully went for a modern and simple Scandinavian feel. With its clever egg shape, The Peep Show features a regionally sourced wood panel front encased in white bio-plastic. Yes, it does have the look of an Apple product.
“My goal was to create a birdhouse that Steve Jobs himself would have liked to have in his backyard,” Gray said. And just like the products Jobs created and inspired, The Peep Show won a prestigious Red Dot Award for excellence in product design in 2023.
While Jobs may have helped inspire the look of birdhouse, Gray’s 95-year-old father Chuck gets lots of credit. Growing up in Alaska, Gray learned to love being able to see birds in their nest.
“Our original prototype — created by Dad — included a sewer inspection camera, coaxial cable, a hole drilled through our kitchen wall, and black and white monitor on the kitchen counter,” Gray said. “Watching baby birds hatch became a much-anticipated annual event.”
“I know he’s pretty proud,” Gray said of his father’s reaction to The Peep Show.
Other features of the house include a climbing wall inside to help fledglings find their way to first flight, top-to-bottom ventilation to keep the nest cooler, and an elevated nesting platform to keep the nest dryer.
As a birder, Gray is particularly sensitive to ensuring that his product doesn’t disrupt the natural comings and goings of the many varied species attracted to his house. The Peep Show includes a camera mount specifically created to accommodate off-the-shelf wireless cameras with at least six months of battery life — ensuring there are never any disruptions to an active nest.
Gray has dedicated a floor of his house in South Seattle to production of The Peep Show, where a series of high-end consumer-grade 3D printers are running 24/7. And the price reflects the effort he has put into the project.
The Peep Show sells on the company website for $199 as a standalone unit without the camera, and for $299 with a Blink outdoor camera kit included so users can stream bird footage straight to a smartphone.
Along the way, Gray was teamed with a mentor from SCORE, a Seattle nonprofit that helps small business owners get started. The mentor was from Herman Miller, makers of modern home and office furniture.
“He took one look at this product and said, ‘We are no longer making birdhouses, we are making objects of art. You do not price this as a birdhouse,'” Gray said.
Other camera-enabled houses and feeders on the market, such as the Birdfy Nest, sell for similar prices. As Gray sees it, those that are priced especially cheap don’t have the best interest of the birds in mind.
“I wanted to be very environmentally conscious, and I have found that this price point is what it actually takes to produce an object like this,” Gray said. “I can trim costs but I can’t drop them in half, because I think I would be doing my customers — I consider birds my customers as well — a disservice.”
