Local investors, termed sharks, circled the room, testing the seven business leaders with pointed questions about their companies.
They came to the final round of pitches for money prepared for well-researched and challenging conversations.
A sense of appreciation was in the air at Chemeketa Community College’s business center. Even though the investors were testing the applicants’ strengths, they had already learned the ins and outs of each company seeking their favor.
When it was over, Oregon-based companies Revino and Stiira won the Shark Tank competition – and took away $20,000 to invest in their plans. Each company received a prize from the investor panel in convertible-note investments, which is funding that investors can later turn into equity.
The event on Aug. 21 was hosted by SEDCOR, a Salem economic development nonprofit, as part of its Launch Mid-Valley initiative to engage entrepreneurs.
During the event, executives pitched their small business plan and explained how they would benefit from the local investors’ endorsement.
SEDCOR brought together a panel of local investors, made up of Salem’s Chris Blackburn of Clutch Inc., AJ Nash of Tradition Real Estate Partners, Helen Anderson and Kristy Runge of HelloCare, Paul Jensen of High Five Advisors, Paul Jackman of Jackman Wealth Management, Rich Duncan of Rich Duncan Construction and Daniel Gosack of DTI Advisers.
Last hosted in February 2020, this local Shark Tank received applications from around 20 small businesses.
Revino, based in Newberg, is a reusable wine bottle supplier. Company officials will use the winning stakes to fund its bottle washing facility.
The company is an intermediary between the bottle manufacturer and regional wineries who want to see the bottles reused.
“We really step in as that network facilitator,” Revino co-founder Keenan O’Hern said. “The hole that we’re filling is that wash facility.”
Three years ago, O’Hern joined Adam Rack, then a manager at a winery in Portland, on a mission to increase sustainable glass use in the wine industry. Rack had a plan to get a winery to rely on reusable bottles but lacked an industry network to bring it to life.
Revino’s process begins when consumers return reusable bottles to the winery, which then turns the bottles over to Revino’s wash facility. There, bottles get washed and checked for cracks and chips before being packed to ship back to the winery.
O’Hern and Rack said 36 wineries have used Revino. With proper care, each bottle can be reused up to 50 times.
Every year since founding Revino, O’Hern and Rack pitched to local entrepreneurs, such as Mike White, from Oregon Entrepreneurs Network. White was one of the regional entrepreneurs who put together the Shark Tank event in August.
In addition to the investment award, the event gave O’Hern and Rack a chance to network with other companies.
“They continue doing their work, we continue doing our work, and then we come back at events like this and see the progress that everyone’s made,” Rack said. “It’s fun, to say the least.”
Casey Rillahan, Stiira’s co-founder and head of sales, echoed Rack’s feelings about the event with its mix of businesses from administrative services to hot sauce makers.
Stiira, based in Portland, started in February 2023, partly in response to the increase in leaves of absence during the Covid pandemic. The company developed software to help employers track and manage employee leave. President Calvin Gower said that requests for mental health leaves have particularly increased.
Rillahan has worked with Gower for around seven years. The idea for the leave management software started brewing while Rillahan and Gower worked at a personnel services provider and saw the increased burden of leave management.
“It’s a solution that we built because we knew there was a big problem with the amount of interest coming to us from our previous employer,” Rillahan said.
Gower and Rillahan said they worked with leave administrators at their former employer to develop Stiira.
Stiira aims to reduce time spent arranging employee leave and reduce the stress of navigating state and federal leave requirements. Gower and Rillahan said that Stiira is also meant to make the leave process easier and friendlier for employees.
“Oftentimes, it’s a difficult point in somebody’s life when they need to go through the process to request leaves of absence,” Rillahan said. “So our platform helps give visibility to all aspects of the process.”
Gower said that Stiira’s interface was designed to be clean and simple so that people going through “tough times” wouldn’t be unnecessarily challenged by the leave process.
Stiira will use the $20,000 to develop a feature in its software that determines employee leave eligibility.
Contact reporter Madeleine Moore: [email protected].
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Madeleine Moore is working as a reporter at Salem Reporter through the University of Oregon’s Charles Snowden internship program. She came to Salem after graduating from the University of Oregon in June 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
