Survival of the Fittest

Swimming with sharks is always scary, but sometimes the risk pays off, as many entrepreneurs found out this season on ABC's Shark Tank. Helmed by reality uber-producer Mark Burnett, the man behind Survivor , the show aimed to boost confidence in the power of ideas and gave real-life people looking for capital a chance to pitch their ideas to a panel of five successful businesspeople representing industries including real estate, technology, education, fashion and yes, infomercials.

On Tuesday night. the season wrapped up and the sharks ended up investing millions of their own money, $3.9 million to be exact, and walking away as majority owners of multiple companies. Real estate queen Barbara Corcoran, who earned Ds in school and had 20 jobs by the time she was 23 but now boasts earnings of $5 billion, was by far the most hungry, putting up nearly $1.4 million in financing. “If I could set a world record, it would be that I have 150 business partners, all with thriving businesses of their own that started with nothing and I made the difference to make them billionaires,” she told ABC. And one of her investments is already paying off. First featured on the September 13^th episode of the show, she gave $50,000 to Pork Barrel BBQ Sauce which at the time was a small business. On Tuesday's episode, we learned that the company, run by two guys who clearly like their BBQ (they came up with the concept while working on Congressional Appropriations sessions in 2006), is in Costco as well as other grocery store chains. There are even plans for a restaurant opening in the spring of 2010. And Corcoran is clearly happy with the company's growth. “Those @porkbarrelbbq guys are real hustlers, i knew they were the right pick,” she tweeted yesterday.

Kevin O'Leary, who sold his educational software company SoftKey Software Products, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Mattel for a cool $3.7 billion. His take-no-prisoners approach led him to buying out some of the biggest names in the industry from 1995-1999, including Mindscape and Broderbund. Not wanting to sit on the case, he founded his own mutual funds company O'Leary Funds, which may explain why he was the most conservative investor, pitching in $490,000. But while he may have financed the least, he was generous with his commentary. He called multiple hopefuls crazy, greedy and just plain stupid. But his best advice to budding entrepreneurs: “don't cry for money, it never cries for you.”

Speaking of shedding no tears, Daymond John, the man behind FuBu's $350 million year in 1998 was the show's top "counterman," saying to many a presenter “if you do counter, I will counter.” Having worked his way up from making and selling hats on the streets of Queens, New York, the “godfather of urban fashion” was not always impressed by design ideas. John tended to team up with Barbara on deals including a $460,000 total investment in Mr. Tod's Pie Factory in the show's first episode. Overall, the fashionista bankrolled $605,000 in dreams.

And making dreams a TV reality is Kevin Harrington's forte. Having spent over 25 years in the infomericals industry bringing in sales in excess of $4 billion, Harrington knows about crazy ideas that will sell. One of them was the URO club, pitched by urologist Dr. Floyd Seskin, Harrington saw the potential in the seven-iron look-alike that doubles as a “wee-wee reservoir when playing putt-putt.” Will it sell millions at $24.99? Harrington thought so, enough to give $25,000 to acquire 70 percent of Seskin's business. In all, the infomercial king was persuaded to part with $550,000 in investment capital throughout the duration of the show.

Some ideas were too out there for acting “den mother” of the group, tech entrepreneur Robert Herjavec who knows a thing or two about “rags to riches.” The son of Croatian immigrants, he waited tables by day and worked on his BRAK systems by night. In 2000, he sold BRAK to AT&T – the company is reportedly now worth $100 million – and he's negotiated deals with the likes of Nokia for $225 million. He now leads The Herjavec Group, an IT security and infrastructure integration firm. Herjavec jumped on many opportunities – some more successful than others. He put up $890,000 in investments and often found himself coaching those who came before the panel. “Most people never get a chance to meet a bunch of people who've done it all before and get some real unbiased advice,” he said. One of his gems: “If you're emotional and you're great at something, the money will follow.”

And while viewers still don't know what happened to all the companies the sharks bid on (Burnett promises an update), the show provided viewers with some much-needed optimism through a very difficult summer of recession. Who says venture capital is dead?