One day in late June, a panel of investors entertained business ideas from around the country. A kitschy advent calendar. A fancy mini-fridge for drinks. A flashlight that emits beams from multiple angles. A machine that grows mushrooms. Bendable cups. Pet plants (for you, not your cat).

This was the Los Angeles set of “Shark Tank,” the ABC show that for 15 years has turned business negotiation into entertainment. Aspiring entrepreneurs use hustle, gross margins and cringe-worthy pitches to pry money from the so-called Sharks in exchange for a stake in their companies.

On one level, “Shark Tank” is your basic reality TV show. The pitches, which last about 45 minutes, are edited to snappy 12- to 15-minute segments with music scored for suspense over tight shots of bug-eyed, sweaty supplicants. Some founders leave the tank defeated, humiliated or in tears. Others leave triumphant with handshake deals. Stories about overcoming struggle and self-doubt feel calibrated to make you cry.

But if you watch the show as I did — most of its 15 seasons in one year — you might be struck by something else: the way it reflects the shifting contours of the American economy. The show started in August 2009, in the pit of the Great Recession. Over the next decade and a half, 1,275 people pitched their ideas on air. The comfort food and DVDs featured in those first years were replaced by the rise of online direct-to-consumer businesses, the allure of Silicon Valley and its build-at-all-costs mentality, and then the shock of the pandemic and the ingenuity that came out of it.

You can also see the emergence of consumer trends: online dating (the Coffee Meets Bagel app); combining capitalism with social good (Bombas socks); democratizing professional services (Everlywell home medical tests); reimagining personal care products (Dude Wipes). And, of course, the show has featured plenty of minimally useful, niche gimmicks that are destined to collect dust.

“‘Shark Tank’ is not a game show,” said Kevin O’Leary, a cutthroat investor known sarcastically in the tank as Mr. Wonderful. “It’s real life. It’s real investing, real money. And it reflects the real economy.”

It is also real exposure. Perhaps the show’s most important role in the entrepreneurial economy is not the advice or money the Sharks dispense, but to serve as a platform for the most American of business strategies: shameless self-promotion.

That exposure might be even more relevant now. As the show enters its 16th season on Oct. 18, the economy seems good on paper, but feels bad for many Americans, including entrepreneurs. Yes, inflation is starting to ease and interest rates are slowly coming down, but the economy still feels in suspense.

The show has been adjusting over the past few years. The Sharks are less excited about businesses with big valuations and more interested in discovering and funding smaller start-ups, said Barbara Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Group who got rich selling Manhattan real estate and has appeared as a Shark since the show’s first season. “So there are a lot of low asks, which I really like because I love to get on the ground floor with people,” she told me.

These “mom-and-pa type people,” as Ms. Corcoran calls them, also make for better TV. Where “Shark Tank” is concerned, good TV comes from stoking a belief — some might call it a myth — that anybody with a good idea and some moxie can make it in America. Having difficulty brushing your daughter’s curly hair? A flash of genius provides the solution and you create a hairbrush company! It’s the American dream.

In fact, the Sharks invoked the American dream so often in my interviews with them that it felt like they were trying to make a sale. Mark Cuban, who is leaving the show after this season, put it this way: “The idea that maybe we had a little bit to do with amplifying entrepreneurship and making the American dream stronger, that’s pretty damn cool, you know?”

From Bakeries to Bots

The “Shark Tank” concept grew out of a Japanese show called “Tigers of Money.” It spread to Britain and Canada as “Dragons’ Den,” and in 2009, Mark Burnett, the television producer known for hit shows like “The Apprentice” and “Survivor,” adapted the idea for the United States.

It was, in some ways, exactly the wrong moment for a show about making it in business. “Shark Tank” debuted less than a year after the subprime mortgage crisis devastated the global economy. The investment firm Lehman Brothers had gone belly up and banks were not lending. Retail sales cratered. But the investors chosen as Sharks saw the show as a new way to make money. “It’s ’08, nobody’s buying more clothes and they can’t pay their rent or mortgage,” said Daymond John, the founder of apparel brand FUBU. “I went on the show to diversify my portfolio.”

That first season Mr. John and the other Sharks were pitched by a lot of sole proprietors: a woman opening a plus-size clothing boutique in Houston, a caregiver who created an elephant-shaped medicine dispenser. The money offered was $100,000 here, $50,000 there. Small potatoes.

The producers and casting department recruited entrepreneurs by looking at local newspapers or relying on word of mouth. Tod Wilson, the first person to pitch in the “tank,” was one of them. He owned a bakery that sold sweet potato pies in Somerset, N.J., and wanted to expand nationwide.

“I had a couple small loans with some local community banks, but nobody was lending any more money,” Mr. Wilson said. On the show, Mr. John and Ms. Corcoran offered him a deal.

By the third season, in 2012, it was time to feel optimistic again. Businesses were making it pleasant to buy stuff online that you usually need to feel and touch — like clothes and eyeglasses. Uber, Airbnb and WeWork, with their outsize valuations, emboldened many companies to think they could hit it big. Instagram and Twitter, along with the ubiquity of Amazon Marketplace, offered new ways to sell goods.

Shark Tank, too, wanted a piece of Silicon Valley.

Producers recruited more ambitious companies through open calls held at Las Vegas convention centers and pitch sessions hosted on college campuses. Sweet potato pies gave way to apps and cloud-based solutions. In episode after episode, viewers saw entrepreneurship as a pathway to financial success and autonomy. The show was growing in popularity, and by Season 6 in 2014, had reached 9.1 million people tuning in per episode.

“The idea that anybody can make it into that top echelon, I think, is an incredibly American mind set,” said Angela Lee, who teaches at Columbia Business School.

In the first season, the average valuation for a company that appeared on the show was $376,000; a decade later, it had ballooned to $2.4 million, according to a database compiled by Halle Tecco, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School who tracked the first 10 seasons of “Shark Tank.” The average amount the Sharks agreed to invest nearly doubled.

The Sharks didn’t always spot the winners. In 2013, the producers reached out to Jamie Siminoff, a successful serial entrepreneur who was tinkering in his garage with a product he called DoorBot.

Like all the entrepreneurs who appear on the show, Mr. Siminoff walked down a long hallway to the double doors that open up to the awaiting Sharks. But instead of those doors opening, Mr. Siminoff knocked three times, prompting Mr. Cuban to ask, “Who’s there?” After some back and forth, the door opened and Mr. Siminoff said, “Wouldn’t it have been nice to know who was behind the door before you let me in?”

He demonstrated how, with a smartphone and his video doorbell, anyone could see who was standing at their door. He had already sold more than $1 million of the devices through his own website alone.

The ensuing negotiations made for good TV. Four Sharks declined to invest, leaving only Mr. O’Leary. He offered Mr. Siminoff an infusion of cash in return for a percentage of every sale. Mr. Siminoff balked, saying those payments would bleed him of cash when he needed it most. With the suspense soundtrack playing underneath, Mr. Siminoff responded: “Respectfully, Mr. Wonderful, we’re going to decline.”

A year later, Mr. Siminoff renamed his business Ring, and four years after that, Amazon bought it for more than $1 billion.

At the time of his “Shark Tank” appearance, Mr. Siminoff “was actually broke, so I did want to get money,” he told me recently. “I didn’t get money, but I got awareness and credibility, which was amazing. I think if it wasn’t for ‘Shark Tank,’ I don’t think Ring would exist today.”

Mr. Siminoff came back as a guest shark in 2018; all the Sharks stood up and clapped.

The QVC Economy

Companies appearing on “Shark Tank” have reinvented the wheel (though the Smart Tire Company didn’t convince the Sharks it was needed). One contender confidently asserted that he had created a “vortex chamber” that harnesses the Earth’s rotation to create electricity. (The Sharks didn’t get it either. He left empty-handed.) The Sharks were pitched a wakeboard-like device that, when attached to an airplane, would allow people to fly. (No thanks. Too much of a liability risk.)

There are a lot of crazy inventions out there.

There are some pretty mind-numbing ones, too (insurance, enterprise software, energy production) that power the economy. But those kinds of companies are rarely reflected on “Shark Tank” for one simple reason: They don’t make for good TV.

Robert Herjavec, a Shark since the first season, has an expertise in cybersecurity. He likes to tell the story of taking Mr. Burnett out for dinner in the show’s early years and asking why producers weren’t bringing to the sound stage more of the back-end companies he gravitated toward.

As Mr. Herjavec recalls, Mr. Burnett told him, “I don’t know how to say this to you, but what you do is boring. You’re missing the entire point of the show.”

That dinner, Mr. Herjavec says, changed his perspective. “I need to invest in things that the consumer is going to get excited about,” he said.

What people get excited about, it turns out, is merchandise that you might purchase impulsively in the checkout line at TJ Maxx. Or, in Target or on the QVC shopping network, platforms where Lori Greiner, one of the mainstay Sharks, has strong connections. “What is a winning product? What do people want? Those are the basics,” Ms. Greiner said.

More than two-thirds of the U.S. economy is driven by consumer spending, and while that includes less tangible things like auto insurance, Ms. Greiner leans into the relatable. She has backed “Shark Tank” companies with some of the biggest sales: Scrub Daddy, the smiley-faced sponge; Simply Fit, the exercise balance board; and the Squatty Potty toilet stool.

Mr. Herjavec learned his lesson. Soon after his dinner with Mr. Burnett, he took an equity stake in what he says is his most memorable investment: Tipsy Elves, a company that makes ugly Christmas sweaters. It has done about $200 million in sales.

What You Don’t See in the Tank

Venture capitalists praise the show for introducing the masses to business concepts like “landed costs” and “scaling.” The show has also helped entrepreneurs find out what their company is worth.

Founders coming from small towns who might not have deep connections to major investors can use “Shark Tank” as a barometer, said Michael Jones, founding partner of Science Inc, a Los Angeles-based investment firm which has poured money into consumer brands like the canned water company Liquid Death and Dollar Shave Club.

“You can get a sense of what terms at least the Sharks think are normal,” he said.

But, venture capitalists are often quick to add, the show does not reveal the nitty-gritty of the negotiation process. The painstaking effort of combing through a company’s financials and ownership structure and analyzing the market sector happens off camera.

During that process, deals agreed to during the taping might be restructured or the founders or Sharks are allowed to walk away. According to an 2023 analysis from Forbes, roughly half of the deals clinched on the show never actually closed.

“They’re a platform to promote entrepreneurship and small businesses,” said Taryn Jones Laeben, founder of early-stage advisory and investment firm IRL Ventures, “more than they are a direct window into the venture capital world.”

Tod Wilson, the pie maker who appeared on the very first episode and received a handshake deal, decided not to go through with the offer. He eventually secured a bank loan. After some ups and downs, he continues to sell in Wegman’s and ShopRite supermarkets as well as online.

He beat the odds. While the show promotes the upside of the American dream, many entrepreneurs face constant challenges to stay in business. Nearly half of all small businesses fail within the first five years.

“I don’t think people know how hard it is to be one of the ones that have made it,” Ms. Lee, the Columbia Business School professor, said. “The problem with social media and everything is that we only hear about the success stories.”

Marketing Muscle

Ms. Lee is also the founder of 37 Angels, an early-stage investment firm. She says she has done due diligence on dozens of companies that have appeared on “Shark Tank.” None of them, she says, described the show primarily as way to get funding. It was a way to market their products.

With nearly 4 million viewers, the show has become a cultural phenomenon. Dozens of blogs and podcasts are dedicated to the show and hundreds of memes on social media reference it (“Hello sharks. Today I am seeking $100,000 so I can just vibe for a bit”). Educators like Ms. Lee use episodes as case studies, and educational programs like Junior Achievement use it to teach students about how to start businesses.

Sarah Paiji Yoo, one of the founders of Blueland, which makes sustainable cleaning products, didn’t really need an investment. By the time she appeared on the show in 2019, she had already raised $3 million in venture capital. The funding she got from Mr. O’Leary was about “driving more awareness of our product,” and credibility, she told me later. Her company has now done more than $200 million in sales.

Dave Heath, co-founder of Bombas, the sock retailer, described the show as a “megaphone.” He appeared in 2014, and two months later his company sold $1.2 million worth of socks. Bombas has now surpassed $1.7 billion in lifetime revenue, making it the show’s most successful company.

The possibility of television exposure also piques the interest of traditional retailers. Ann Crady Weiss, the co-founder of Hatch, was scheduled to tape a “Shark Tank” segment with her husband to pitch a baby changing pad that doubled as a scale. Before the filming, she flew out to Target’s headquarters in Minneapolis to meet a buyer.

“I decided to leverage the fact that we were going to be on TV,” Ms. Weiss recounted. “The buyer gave us a shot at Target because of the ‘Shark Tank’ appearance.”

“We turn you into a rock star and you become part of the ‘Shark Tank’ culture and the lore of ‘Shark Tank’,” said Mr. O’Leary. “Your deal becomes legend and stays in syndication for decades. What venture capital can do that?”

On the weekend in June, toward the end of the second day of “Shark Tank” tapings, a young man in a black T-shirt burst through the set’s familiar doors to pitch his restaurant in Queens. He had saved $600,000, which impressed the Sharks, who offered encouragement. At one point, Mr. O’Leary said, “you should be mentoring me.”

Near the end of his time in front of them, Mr. John stood up, walked over and handed him his personal phone number.

“This is what I wanted,” the founder said before walking off.

After Wells Fargo was mired in a 2013 scandal over employees who opened millions of fake banking accounts, the bank created a new centralized unit to review customer complaints and employees’ allegations of workplace abuses.

Now, however, that team is upended by its own turmoil as its members have accused bank officials of aggressively trying to block a unionization drive and firing employees in retaliation for their efforts to organize.

Wells Fargo officials are open about their disfavor of the unionization effort but deny that the layoffs of 11 employees in the bank’s conduct management intake department were a response to the ongoing unrest, saying they were part of planned organizational changes.

The discontent is playing out against the backdrop of a broader push that began last year to unionize employees of the San Francisco-based bank. Tellers and other employees at about 20 Wells Fargo branches so far have voted to join Wells Fargo Workers United, the first-ever union at a major U.S. bank.

In interviews, current and laid-off members of the conduct management department said clashes with management arose after they announced in early September their intent to hold a vote on whether the 48 members of the department would join the union. In response, bank officials sent employees a barrage of emails disparaging the idea and continued to oppose it in meetings between higher-ups and staff, according to interviews with workers and emails reviewed by The Times.

“I personally don’t believe that this union can help us move forward as a team,” a manager wrote in one email. “I don’t think this union can guarantee anything for any of you.”

In another email, another manager indicated unionizing would not help workers better their pay and benefits.

“The CWA has probably promised you that things can only get better if you vote for them, but ask yourself, if that were true, why wouldn’t every worker in the United States be in a union?” a third manager wrote in an email.

Kieran Cuadras, 42, who began working at Wells Fargo as a teller in the Sacramento area in 2002, said senior managers would “hijack” work calls to tell workers why they shouldn’t unionize. In a video meeting, workers were told they had to switch their cameras on to hear from a labor relations manager hired by Wells Fargo, Cuadras said.

On Oct. 1, Cuadras received a message to join a call, on which she was fired. “It was heartbreaking. I sat there and sobbed.”

“They laid people off days before voting. Wells Fargo is not supposed to taint the election process. How can that not be viewed as intimidation, days before the vote?” Cuadras said.

After their layoffs, the 11 employees filed a claim against Wells Fargo with the National Labor Relations Board alleging unfair labor practices.

The union vote, which began last week, will conclude at the end of the month.

Wells Fargo assured workers who were laid off they would still be able to vote in the union election, but then walked back that claim and contested their votes, said Nick Weiner, the organizing director for the Committee for Better Banks, a New York-based group affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, the parent organization of Wells Fargo Workers United.

“Wells Fargo has been pulling out all the stops to try to convince them to vote no,” Weiner said.

Wells Fargo spokesperson Rachel Wall said the layoffs were routine.

“We regularly review and adjust staffing levels to align with market conditions and the needs of our businesses. This decision was made earlier this year and has nothing to do with the union,” she said in an emailed statement.

Wall said that the bank disapproved of the union and stood by its attempts to inform employees about its position, but that it respected employees’ rights and would bargain in good faith with employees who choose to be represented by a union.

“We respect our employees’ rights to vote for or against union representation and appreciate their careful consideration of this decision,” Wall said. “We believe our employees are best served by working directly with Wells Fargo and our leadership, and, within our rights, we will continue to speak with our employees about these matters so that each employee can make an informed decision.”

Unions of bank employees are unusual. According to an analysis of 2023 data by the U.S. Department of Labor, only 1.2% of workers in the banking and finance industry are unionized, among the lowest rates of union representation across industries.

Workers said uncertainty about job security, a lack of transparency about administrative decisions and concerns about the bank’s internal checks on misconduct led them to try to unionize. Particularly jarring, they said, was an announcement that workers who had worked remotely for years would need to move to different states to work in person, or reapply for their jobs altogether.

The bank, workers said, had shifted some of the conduct management department’s responsibilities to employees based in India and changed policies and procedures in a manner that reduced the type and number of complaints the department investigated.

“Management wasn’t listening to our concerns about changes in our procedures and definitions that would let misconduct slip through undetected,” said Heather Rolfes, an attorney in the complaint review department who was laid off.

The conduct management intake department at Wells Fargo was created in the wake of the scandal that erupted in 2016 when The Times reported bank employees had opened millions of fake deposit and checking accounts, and often transferred funds from consumers’ accounts without their knowledge or consent. Regulators eventually slapped Wells Fargo with fines and forced the bank to overhaul its processes to improve compliance.

Workers point out that changes made to their department come as government watchdogs have begun to ease strict compliance measures imposed on Wells Fargo as a result of the scandal, signaling that the bank is nearing the end of more than a decade of heightened regulatory oversight.

Roslynn Berkeland, 32, who has worked at Wells Fargo for nine years, including three years in her current role in the conduct management intake department, said the layoffs have left a team that is less experienced and “completely overwhelmed.” On Tuesday she said she had been assigned 16 cases that day, double the number of cases she typically would handle.

“I’m really worried about accuracy and the risk we are taking on,” Berkeland said. “I don’t know who to ask questions to anymore.”

In response to questions about concerns that the bank has eroded its ability to properly investigate questions of misconduct, Wells Fargo’s spokesperson said that changes the company has made aim to address inefficiencies in the process and that its global sites are equipped to handle sensitive information.

“We have taken great care in continuing to optimize our processes so that concerns are routed appropriately at the outset and reviewed in a timely fashion by those best positioned to address or resolve the matter,” Wall said.

The Federal Trade Commission continued its crackdown on businesses that deceptively market and sell subscription services, adopting a rule Wednesday requiring companies to let consumers cancel a gym membership, streaming video service or other subscription as easily as they started it.

The rule expands the FTC’s restrictions on “negative option” offers, which automatically start, renew or expand a service unless a consumer takes action to stop it. Examples include free trials that convert automatically to paid subscriptions and one-year contracts that renew endlessly on their own.

Long in the works — the commission began looking into the issue in 2019 — the FTC’s rule is similar to a California “click to cancel” measure that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law last month. The main requirement is that subscription services allow people to cancel as simply as they signed up — for example, though an easy-to-find link online or a single phone call.

The rule also requires businesses to obtain explicit consent before signing someone up for a subscription, bars them from withholding important information or lying about the services they’re selling, and requires them to “clearly and conspicuously” disclose the terms before collecting a customer’s payment information.

As more companies and product lines have shifted from one-time payments to recurring monthly fees, more consumers have bemoaned the hurdles they have to clear to extricate themselves from the subscriptions they no longer want. The FTC said it had received nearly 70 complaints a day on average from consumers about recurring subscriptions and negative options this year, up from 42 a day in 2021.

In an email, Lindsay Owens of the Groundwork Collaborative, an advocacy group that supports the new rule, said examples of the problems included “sitting on hold to try to cancel a subscription that you signed up for online in seconds, having to drive to the gym to cancel a subscription when you can access every other part of your account from the website, [and] having to navigate a slew of unwanted and often misleading ‘deals’ designed to keep you enrolled.”

She added, “The digital economy has made purchasing, signing up, and enrolling a breeze. Now the FTC has made a rule that consumers must be able to cancel a subscription just as seamlessly as they can enroll, without the tricks, traps, extra time and roadblocks companies have deployed deceptively for years to keep people on autopay.”

In a statement, Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director at Public Interest Research Group, likened many subscription services and memberships to “a visit to Hotel California: ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.’” Now, she said, “You’ll be able to leave.”

Many consumers also complained about trying to cancel a service only to encounter “a never-ending phone tree or online maze that required click after click after click, only to find themselves back at the beginning.” The FTC’s new restrictions and requirements, she said, “give consumers more freedom to switch providers, read a different news service, buy a different pet food or none at all.”

The rule split the commission along partisan lines, with the three Democratic appointees in favor and two Republicans opposed. In her dissenting statement, Commissioner Melissa Holyoak said the rule not only exceeded the agency’s legal authority but also “incentivizes companies to avoid negative option features that honest businesses and consumers find valuable.” Predicting that the rule would not survive a legal challenge, she accused the commission’s chair, Lina Khan, of rushing to finalize the rule before the election to help the Democratic candidate for president, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Unless a court intervenes, the new rule will go into effect in about six months. The new state law (Assembly Bill 2863) will kick in a few months later, applying to subscription contracts signed or renewed after July 1, 2025.

Robert Herrell of the Consumer Federation of California, which sponsored the state law, welcomed the FTC rule but noted that AB 2863 goes further. In particular, he said in an email, it includes two requirements the FTC originally proposed but dropped from the final rule: that consumers receive a reminder before a subscription automatically renews each year, and that subscribers can cancel without having to wade through multiple discount offers and other attempts to persuade them to renew.

The state law also will continue to apply to California consumers if the FTC’s new rule is enjoined by a federal judge or blocked by Congress, Herrell said.