Geek My Tree Net Worth: How a $900K Christmas Lights Dream Went Dark

Last updated on May 27, 2026

A certain type of Shark Tank narrative endures longer than the success stories. Not the victorious ones with the eight-figure exits. The other kind, in which everything appeared to be going well, the founder made all the appropriate remarks, and then the business quietly ceased to exist. Among them is Geek My Tree. It’s fairly simple to settle on the numbers that people look for. Brad Boyink valued his business at $900,000 when he walked onto the set in late 2015 and demanded $225,000 in exchange for 25%.

That number had been nearly halved by the time he shook hands with Kevin O’Leary. He agreed to pay Kevin O’Leary $225k for 50% of his business, which was worth $450,000. Nowadays, the honest response to the question of net worth is more direct than anyone would like: since the company is no longer in existence, it is practically meaningless. The dollar amount was never the most fascinating aspect. What sticks in my memory is how brilliant the concept appeared on paper and how obstinately the real world refused to comply.

Boyink wasn’t a trend-spotting opportunist. This was what he had been doing for years. The Holiday Road musical Christmas light show, which ran for six years in the Grand Haven and Spring Lake regions, marked the beginning of his career with holiday lights. Imagine for a moment a neighborhood in western Michigan, with cars parked along residential streets and the air of December. He even organized a light show with 14 synchronized houses that drew 70,000 spectators. Driving past a home, 70,000 people watch the lights blink in time with the music. That isn’t a pastime. That man had some understanding of why Christmas lights are important to people.

Thus, the product made sense as a continuation of him. The Glow Balls, which are programmable via a phone app and can sync to music, dropped from a ring at the top of the tree. Each ball threw 360 degrees of color. By most accounts, it was genuinely well-made. It wasn’t cheap junk hardware. The price was the issue, which the sharks detected almost instantly.

A set cost between $300 and $500, and expansion kits added even more. When you watch the episode again, you can see that as soon as those figures land, the room cools. Boyink received a $225,000 offer from O’Leary for a 50% share in GeekMyTree. When Boyink countered with a 40 percent offer, he would not budge. Boyink folded. What’s remarkable is how content he appeared to be with it afterwards. “I don’t have a problem with the 50 percent because I know in the long run, he’s going to help me bring this into every American’s household”, he told viewers following the deal. In retrospect, reading that sentence feels almost painful because of the kind of faith it contains.

The faith appeared to be justified for a time. The agreement was finalized. Sales increased. Boyink and his group took a risk by lowering prices and making the products more affordable. To go beyond conventional Christmas trees, GeekMyTree launched a Kickstarter campaign for its “Tree Effects” tabletop light-tree and introduced products like “Party Pixels” and window-mounted systems. That tabletop campaign easily achieved its objective and generated more revenue than it had anticipated. The strategy is simple to understand: find something to sell in March and July instead of just December; a seasonal product is a trap.

Because this is the more subdued and unsettling reality that lies beneath the entire narrative. Before, during, and after the show, no one ever made public what Geek My Tree actually made in a year. You can learn something from that silence. A business that is keen to demonstrate momentum typically manages to release its best figures. The lack of them implies that the difference between the operation’s operating expenses and revenue was never sufficiently large.

Boyink didn’t make a big deal out of it when it ended in 2018. He attributed his company’s downfall to “patent trolls”, tariffs, and imitation goods. Anyone who has attempted to create physical hardware in a globalized market is familiar with all three of these real forces. Imitators at lower prices poured in. The margins he had worked so hard to increase were squeezed by tariffs. Furthermore, the three or four weeks of actual demand during the seasonal window never lasted as long as a year-round product would.

The rhythm of his farewell note suggested that he had come to terms with it. “It’s been an incredible journey, and we have created some amazing products, but things have changed and the lights are dimming.” The lights are going down. He was unable to avoid the metaphor, and to be honest, he had no reason to. There’s not much left. A website is no longer active. There is no sign of a comeback as of 2025; both the app and the original website are no longer operational. Somewhere in late 2018, an Instagram account froze like a stopped clock.

It would be easy to write Geek My Tree off as a failure and move on, but that would be too neat. Boyink scaled the product, reduced the price, and attempted to outrun the schedule after striking a deal with the toughest negotiator in the Tank. He accomplished nearly all of the tasks expected of a founder. The market merely concluded that high-end animated Christmas lights were a luxury that few people would purchase but that most people would admire. There’s a lesson about hardware and seasonality there that no investment, no matter how fantastic, can completely overcome, and you can’t help but feel a little sorry for the guy who had to pay for it.

i) https://www.sharktankblog.com/business/geekmytree/
ii) https://www.slashgear.com/1911356/what-happened-geek-my-tree-christmas-lights-shark-tank-season-7/
iii) https://www.geekwire.com/2017/deluxe-gaming-furniture-maker-geek-chic-featured-shark-tank-shuts/
iv) https://www.housedigest.com/1420092/whatever-happened-geek-my-tree-animated-christmas-lights-after-shark-tank-season-7/