Rob Merlino: Blogger, Writer, Entrepreneur & Foodie

Love & Pebble co founder Lynda Truong suffered from bad acne as a teen. Since her family didn’t have any money for extras like skin care, she began mixing up skin care remedies in the kitchen with readily available, all natural ingredients. It’s something she’s done since then and in 2018, she decided to make […]

The Johnson family didn’t originally set out to make Zach & Zoe Sweet Bee Farm into a business, they just wanted to escape city living for the countryside. Unfortunately, Zach developed severe allergies in the bucolic Kingwood Township countryside. His parents, Kam and Summer tried everything: allergy medicines, steroids, even a few trips to the […]

Chris Videau started Sheets Laundry Club after being discharged from the military to help combat the plastic wastes problem we have here on Planet Earth. He saw a lot of plastic waste on his tours of duty and even experienced the choking smoke of plastic burn pits. He wanted to do something about it, so […]

Ashley and Brittany Silfies created Pink Picasso Kits, their paint by numbers kits for adults, as a spin-off of their other successful business, Modern Monet Kits. Once completed, it looks as if Picasso (or Monet) painted the picture. The kits are an expansion on adult coloring books which were all the rage a few years […]

Julia Rogers, a practicing family law attorney in Boston, created Hello Pre-Nup to make prenuptial agreements accessible and less uncomfortable for soon to be married couples. Her CTO, Sarabeth Jaffe, joins her in the Shark Tank as they seek to persuade the Sharks to invest in their business. As a family law attorney, Rogers has […]

Fish Fix, Melissa Harrington and Emily Castro’s frozen fish subscription box, was born out of Melissa’s desire to eat fish twice a week. Since she was a mother of two and salesperson for a seafood company, it wasn’t always convenient to make fish, so she started vacuum packing servings of fish and freezing them. If […]

Sabeena Ladha created Deux (pronounced “dough”), her line of vegan cookie dough, as a delivery mechanism for the supplements she was taking. She wished aloud to her friend “wouldn’t it be nice if I could have all my supplements in a cookie?” When she went looking around for cookies with vitamins in them and found […]

Cyndi Bray invented Wad Free to solve a problem that was driving her nuts: sheets wadding up in the washer and dryer. Not only is it a mess, it wastes energy. When wet, wadded up sheets are in the dryer, they take much longer to dry, thus wasting electricity. The mess is another story – […]

When Caroline Creidenberg started Wedfuly, virtual weddings weren’t a thing. But with the year we had in 2020, they quickly became one. Imagine you planned a June wedding in 2020. You had to completely scrap your plans and postpone the wedding until the Covid-19 pandemic subsided or pivot and get creative. Creidenberg and her team […]

Trey Brown created SPERGO Apparel to get himself and his friends of increasingly violent streets in his neighborhood. He wanted to create a hip brand that exuded positivity and encouraged his peers to follow their dreams. So at age 12, with $178 he got for his birthday, he purchased 16 tee shirts and personally sold […]

Peter Solimine created his Beulr App so he could sleep through his early morning classes. When the world went on lockdown in March, 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, universities pivoted to providing class time via Zoom. Business meeting were also conducted via the now hugely popular app. Solomine, an economics and computer science major […]

Bo Habber and Rasmus Barfred, two of the three co-founders of the Magic 5, created their custom swim goggles to solve a common problem for swimmers: swim goggles. Goggles can be a pain. They leak, they’re too tight sometimes and hurt, they fog up or, worse, they fall off when you enter the water. Michael […]

Leigh Issacson and her sister Casey got the idea for Tabby Dates from their other business: Dig Dates, a dating app for dog lovers. The sisters both love dogs and got the idea for the Dig app because Casey broke up with a guy who just wasn’t a dog person. They made Dig Dates to […]

Amanat Anand and Shubham Issar started designing the SoaPen to save lives. They were shocked to learn that 1.5 million children needlessly die of infectious diseases every year. These deaths can be prevented by simply washing their hands. They met as students while studying industrial design at the Parsons School of Design in New York […]

Christina Tegbe named her African made skin care line after the continent itself. Africa has 54 countries, so she named the company 54 Thrones. All the products are made in Africa by local artisans. The product line is as varied as the different cultures throughout Africa. There are things like an Egyptian lavender and Moroccan […]

Dinesh Tadepalli got the idea for IncrEDIBLE Eats, his edible spoons, while taking his kids out for ice cream. He was shocked by the amount of plastic spoons in the trash. He did some research and found out people throw away over 100,000 plastic utensils every day. Dinesh is an engineer and he wanted to […]

Kelly Moynihan created the Flasky Flowers flower flask to make weddings a little more bearable on brides and bridesmaids. They always have to hold their flowers and it’s tough to take a drink without setting them down. Whether you have a margarita or just water, it’s a novel way to have a drink at a […]

Ali Bonar started experimenting with making granola butter after a ten year battle with food disorders. She studied nutrition at UC Berkeley and her meticulous nature forced her to try and eat perfectly. It didn’t work. She developed an intolerance to nuts during that time. When she finally beat her food demons, she wanted a […]

Dwayne Walker didn’t have online art classes as a kid. In fact, he didn’t have art classes at all; his parents couldn’t afford them. Still, he managed to teach himself and win many art contests on a local, statewide, national and international level. Even though he was able to master his talent, he felt professional […]

Long Wharf Supply Co founders and siblings Lauren and Michael Lamanga grew up on the water in Newburyport, Massachusetts. This led to leading what Michael calls a “salty life.” He was always boating and fishing. Once he became a New York City dweller, he began working with Harlem Lacrosse, an organization that uses lacrosse as […]

Chris and Jennifer Jane have the skills to bring their Proper Good Soup to the masses. Chris attended Stanford’s business school and Jennifer has a background in marketing. Jennifer and Chris also created and founded a successful “clean” condiment business that they scaled nationally. They parted ways with their cofounder of Montana Mex, Eduardo Garcia, […]

The Mute Me team is a study in speed to market. In just ten months they went from concept to shipped product. Part of it was they were solving a big problem brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic: conducting business meetings at home via the internet. Parents, including the  Mute Me team’s parents, often had […]

Husband and wife team Ellen Hodges and Omayya Atout created Songlorious, their custom songs business, out of their love of music and each other. What they do is contract musicians all over the world to write and produce custom songs for any occasion. Imagine you’re getting married and you want the DJ to “play your […]

Paskho Clothing designer Patrick Robinson has over 20 years experience working for the top fashion brands in the world. That experience made him think long and hard about the fashion industry’s sustainability. Factories that make clothing are big polluters according to the statistics listed on the Pasko Clothing website. When he started the business in […]