By All Means

What happens after a founder appears on Shark Tank, and walks away from a $250,000 offer? For Beth Fynbo, her Busy Baby activity mat saw six weeks worth of online sales in in three days. “And two weeks later,” she says, “no one had heard of us.” “I thought Shark Tank was going to be life changing, and it was—just not in the way that I thought.” Fynbo, an Army veteran and former health care account manager, was a new mom when inspiration struck. Kids were constantly dropping toys off their high chairs. Her Busy Baby silicone suction placemat keeps toys, teethers, and utensils secured in place. In 2023, two years after her Shark Tank appearance, Busy Baby logged $5 million in sales and introduced new add ons to its core product. Now with two years of growth and perspective since her national television debut, Fynbo talks about what it’s really like to go on Shark Tank and what it’s really like to build a business from the ground up, including raising money, creating an advisory board, navigating the waves o