Startups

Joye B. Moore’s pies may have captured the tastebuds of the sharks, but she ultimately walked home empty-handed from Friday’s “Shark Tank” episode.

Joye B. Moore will pitch her company on tonight’s episode of ‘Shark Tank’ at a time of re-birth for Joyebells after it had to pull its products from store shelves in 2023. 

When Sara Sloman sat down to her first Mahjong table in 2023, she never dreamed the game would spur a business that has grown throughout Richmond and beyond.

The mortgage industry veteran purchased the Richmond franchise of Mobiledumps, while a local couple are the new owners of the region’s Pool Scouts franchise.

Envee and its pesto-caesar salad dressing is the latest food venture born out of the university’s Bench Top Innovations program.

Richmond-based Keya Snacks this week is unveiling a new Black Salt variety of its bagged chips as well as the introduction of a newly repackaged and tweaked Bombay Spice flavor, which the company has sold for several years.

REI Hub, which was the third fastest-growing company in the region last year, is now part of TurboTenant and its customer base of 700,000 landlords nationwide.

Food-related businesses fueled much of the local startup scene this year, while several young companies raked in sizable capital raises for their next phases of growth.

“Fusion is the process that happens inside the stars. On Earth, when we get it to work, we’ll use it to make electricity in fusion power plants. That electricity will be clean, it’ll be (reliable), it’ll be safe,” said the CEO of MIT-born Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

The company, which sold products like lip gloss and lipstick, pointed to inflation and a tightened investor capital market as reasons for its closing.