This edition of “The Tiffany Krumins Show” was recorded live at the offices of Product QuickStart in historic downtown Lawrenceville, GA. Tiffany’s guests were Don Muntner and Noah McNeely. They talked about how to turn your idea into a product, and then the steps to follow to take your product to market.
Don Muntner & Noah McNeely/Product QuickStart
Product QuickStart was created out of a passion to meet the product development, prototyping, and manufacturing needs of entrepreneurs, start-ups, and small companies. In their careers, they’ve met way too many inventors and would-be product entrepreneurs that have been taken advantage of in this industry, so they decided to do something about it. There is no shortage of engineers, marketing people, and “submission companies” that will gladly take your money and get you nowhere. That’s not Product QuickStart. Their goal is to be honest operators, and do everything they can to help clients understand what they are getting into and their odds of success.
TIFFANY KRUMINS
Tiffany Krumins, the first Shark Tank winner, is an Atlanta native and the inventor of Ava the Elephant, a child friendly dispenser that takes the fear out of taking medicine. Called a modern day Mary Poppins, Tiffany has gone from nanny to entrepreneur, and has seen her passion to help children grow into a business that is now known and loved all over the world.
Tiffany’s success story began when she was a nanny to a little boy with Down’s syndrome who was terrified of “medicine time”. To help alleviate his fear, she constructed an animal made of fabric, sponges, a store bought medicine dropper, and a recordable sound chip from a greeting card – and Ava the Elephant was born. Knowing that she would need to find a way to produce her invention, Tiffany began searching the internet and found a casting call on Craigslist that said: “Do you have the next million dollar idea but don’t have the funding to make it happen?” She immediately applied for the casting and was invited to be on the first ever episode of Shark Tank.
Her story has been a roller coaster ride as she went from being on a national TV show and receiving $50,000 to start her company, to learning just months later that she had thyroid cancer. While working from a hospital bed, she struggled through the growing pains of building a business and fighting cancer.
Tiffany’s appearance on Shark Tank and the success following continues to provide countless opportunities for her and her brand. Her story has received unparalleled exposure. Some of her more notable appearances and acknowledgements:
- Follow-up appearances on Shark Tank on four separate occasions
- Sharing her story and her product on the Dr. Oz Show to a national audience of millions of viewers
- Nominated for the Top 50 Mompreneurs by Babble.com
- Keynote speaker for Disney Social Media Mom’s
- Her story has been featured on Forbes.com, Entrepreneur.com, TVGuide.com, YoungEntrepreneur.com, MomInventors.com and many other online and print publications
