In the hot seat: local inventors kiss up to shark tank investors.

• Author: Stewart, Heather
• Position: Lessons Learned

One hot day, as entrepreneurs Dallas Robinson and Mike Buonomo were working a door-to-door sales job in Texas, the pair began brainstorming ways to raise both money and awareness for their fledgling lip balm company, Kisstixx, which they developed while students at Utah Valley University.

"We were out knocking on doors, sweating like crazy, and we sat down on a curb to put our heads together," recalls Buonomo. As it happened, open tryouts for the television show Shark Tank were just two days away, in Texas. Shark Tank is a reality TV show in which five potential investors evaluate pitches from inventors and entrepreneurs. If impressed, the investors make business proposals to the entrepreneurs.

Robinson and Buonomo were working in Texas to earn money to support their venture. Since the Shark Tank tryouts were two days away, the pair had Kisstixx product delivered overnight and began working on their presentation. At the tryouts, says Buonomo, "we had to wait in line all day to get to meet an executive producer's assistant's assistant."

After the tryouts, they waited and prepared.

Buonomo says they didn't find out until two days before taping that they were chosen to appear on the show. "We never knew that we were going," he says. "But we were told, 'Make sure you know your numbers. Make sure you're ready."

When the call came, they were ready. They knew their numbers, they had researched the celebrity investors and planned an attention-grabbing presentation (which involved coercing two of the rival investors into kissing each other). And they had an ace in the hole--a last-minute, $500,000 purchase order from Walgreens that boosted their company's valuation.

Buonomo and Robinson went into the taping with a request for a $200,000 investment in exchange for a 20 percent stake in the company. With only $80,000 in actual sales, most of the investors thought they had over-valued their company.

"We actually expected them to beat us up on our valuation a little bit more," explains Buonomo. "But we didn't want them to feel we were unconfident in our brand." While most of the investors quickly backed away from Kisstixx, one took the bait.

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Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, offered them the $200,000 investment for a 40 percent slice of the company. "We were willing to go up to a certain percentage, and Mark came in just under that percentage," says Buonomo. They gladly accepted the deal.

"The outcome was just about as...