KEYNOTE PRESENTATION
Shark Tank Success Stories: Behind the Pitch — A Candid Conversation With Successful Founders

Nicole Denise Phillip is a Brand Intelligence Strategist and founder of CoAgency, where she helps coaches, consultants, and online service experts turn clarity into consistent conversion. Through her Intelligence Pillars framework — Business Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, Capital Intelligence, and Well-Being Intelligence — Nicole equips leaders to scale without burnout by aligning their messaging, automation, systems, and capacity. With over a decade of experience in brand positioning, business development, and strategic advisory, Nicole is known for helping high-capacity entrepreneurs eliminate confusion, install intelligent systems, and build businesses that support their life instead of competing with it. Her work bridges the gap between calling and conversion, strategy and sustainability, visibility and profitability. When Nicole speaks, audiences leave with clarity, conviction, and a framework they can immediately implement.

Eugenia Chen is the founder of Pandaloon, the pet apparel brand and Shark Tank winner who closed a deal with Daymond John. Pandaloon started as a homemade costume for her dog, went viral and grew into a brand with a global audience, including features on Good Morning America, Nat Geo Wild, and Netflix. It was built on organic content she created and scaled featuring her dog, Huxley the Panda Puppy, to over 6 million followers and over a billion video views. She has produced content for brands including P&G, Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok. Alongside running Pandaloon, and drawing on a background as a former computational scientist, she works with brands and founders on organic social strategy, creative direction, and the creative and operational systems behind building an audience through content.

Tony Gonzales is an inventor, entrepreneur, patent holder, and practicing attorney who knows firsthand what it takes to turn an idea into a real-world product. Tony is the co-founder of Slick Barrier, the revolutionary pest-control technology featured on ABC’s Shark Tank. Slick Barrier takes a completely different approach to pest prevention: rather than relying on pesticides to kill crawling pests after they enter a property, its clear coating is applied around the base of a home or structure and dries to an extremely smooth, glass-like finish. Because many crawling pests cannot gain traction on the slick surface, the barrier helps stop them before they ever get inside. Tony is the holder of four patents and has experienced the inventor’s journey from multiple perspectives—from developing and protecting intellectual property to building a company, bringing a new product to market, educating consumers, and pitching on one of the biggest entrepreneurial stages in the country. He also brings a unique legal perspective to innovation. A practicing attorney for 21 years, Tony understands how important intellectual property, contracts, strategy, and persistence can be when transforming an invention into a business. Tony lives in Arizona and is a proud Arizona State University alumnus and father of four. One of his children is a senior at MIT, while another will soon follow in his footsteps by attending ASU. At his core, Tony is a problem solver who believes some of the best businesses begin with a simple question: There has to be a better way to do this. His experience with Slick Barrier has given him a firsthand appreciation for both the excitement and the challenges of inventing—developing an idea, protecting it, proving it works, getting people to understand it, and ultimately turning that idea into something customers can use.