Busy Baby startup drops into the Shark Tank
One Rochester-area entrepreneur swam with Sharks this past fall, and she has video to prove it. In a little over two week’s time, in fact, it will air on national television.
Oronoco’s Beth Fynbo will make an appearance on the Season 12 finale of Shark Tank, airing March 5 on ABC. Her company, Busy Baby, makes baby toys that include straps and suction-cupped silicone placemats, designed to keep little tykes from throwing their toys all over the place — Busy Baby’s website dubs it the “toddler toss.”
She says her journey to the show started nearly two years ago, when she entered an entrepreneurial start-up class sponsored by Bunker Labs. One of the teachers happened to have the email address for a Shark Tank producer, which Fynbo wrote down — although she says she was nowhere near ready to pitch her product at the time.
Fast forward to Busy Baby’s launch day, however — nearly a year later — and a curious email showed up in her inbox.
“I added [the producer’s] email into my email list, and when I finally launched the product, he was on the list, and I totally forgot about it, ” said Fynbo. “I got an email from him, and he was asking ‘do you have sales? Where are you at?,’ things like that. It took about a year before I got the offer to audition and send in a tape.”
That was in June of 2020, and in September, she got the good news: ABC would fly her out to Las Vegas to be a part of the show.
Fynbo says she spent nine days in Vegas, mostly cooped up in her hotel — a huge difference from the experience of contestants in normal years, who are flown out to Sony’s studios in Los Angeles to get the full sight-seeing experience. In this pandemic year, though, Fynbo says she was tested for Covid-19 three times, and did her rehearsal inside her hotel room.
Once she got to face the bright lights, TV cameras and famous panelists, though, she said the experience was similar to how she expected it to be, after watching previous episodes. The one main difference, she said, comes down to timing — Fynbo said she talked with the Sharks for roughly 45 minutes. A normal, edited Shark Tank segment runs around 10-12 minutes.
“It’s almost exactly how you see it on TV,” she added. “From walking down the hallway to standing on the carpet in front of them, to how the conversation goes; they don't know anything about you when you walk in.”
Of course, Fynbo isn’t allowed to spoil whether she received any investment offers from the Sharks — although she did say she targeted her pitch toward the ‘QVC Queen’ Lori Greiner. While she won’t see the final, edited clip until it airs, she could share two things with us: the conversation was spirited, and the entire experience was a highlight of her life.
“This is definitely one to watch,” said Fynbo. “There was a lot of interesting banter and things that would make for good TV. I don’t know how they’ll edit it together, but I think it’ll make for an interesting episode.”
Isaac Jahns is a Rochester native and a 2019 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism. He reports on politics, business and music for Med City Beat.
Cover photo: submitted
