Busy Baby founder and president Beth Fynbo has been busy herself.
Fynbo founded the Oronoco, Minnesota-based company, which makes silicone placemats and toys for teething babies, in 2017. The first placemat was designed for her own children, now 3 years and 8 months old. But other interested parents convinced her to turn Busy Baby into a business.
That business saw 900% growth in 2020 to $900,000 in sales, was a division winner at the Minnesota Cup startup competition and will get national attention with an appearance this Friday on ABC's investment-focused reality television show Shark Tank. Busy Baby has two employees; Fynbo and her brother, Eric.
She applied to be on the show in the spring of 2020 and found out she had been selected in the summer. She would shoot her appearance in September, right after the winners of the Minnesota Cup were announced.
Fynbo won the Minnesota Cup's general division in 2020 in her third year competing, as well as prizes for being the competition's best woman-led startup and the best startup from southern Minnesota. She did her last pitch for the contest just two weeks before her appearance on Shark Tank filmed, which she said was perfect practice for pitching in front of the show's investors.
"Thank God I was in the Minnesota Cup," she said.
After that, it was off to The Venetian in Las Vegas, where this season of Shark Tank is shooting. She spent a week quarantining in the Shark Tank bubble, eating room service and catching up on work. The show usually shoots its segments months before they're shown on TV, and not all companies that film segments see those segments make it to the air, Fynbo said.
In her case, television perceptions mostly matched reality. Her longer pitch for the judges will be edited down for the show (she isn't sure what will be chosen and what won't) but she wasn't nervous, in part because she binge-watched the show's old episodes.
The judges, Fynbo said, really are the way they're portrayed on television. Kevin O'Leary said that her valuation was "ridiculous" and too high, while Mark Cuban was a cheerleader.
"Mark Cuban was the nicest person ever. He's definitely my favorite Shark now," she said.
Fynbo can't discuss whether she received an investment from any of the judges or not. She did say that she was surprised the judges didn't think the product was as cool as she did, but that they were impressed with her as an entrepreneur.
The lift that an appearance on Shark Tank can give to a young company is well-known and Fynbo has bet on it. Since her appearance on the show, she's bought almost half a million dollars worth of inventory, taking on a good amount of debt in the process.
She has 50,000 Busy Baby mats on-hand and hopes parents watching the show will see the same value in them that her first customers saw three years ago.
"We are going to sell our hearts out," she said.
The episode will air this Friday, March 5, at 7:00 p.m.
