The 'Shark Tank' Company Worth $7 Million After Its On-Air Deal With Barbara Corcoran Fell Through

Tillotson is now 23 and Welsh 25. Tillotson's father is their chief sales person. A former sales person for Honest Tea, he joined his daughter's company when Honest Tea was acquired by Coca-Cola in 2011. Father and daughter have a daily check-in to make sure they are on the same page with regard to company issues.

In an interview with About Face magazine, Welsh described how the college athletes came up with their first peanut butter recipe when they ran out of the store-bought variety. They opted to head to the kitchen instead of venture out to the grocery store in the rain.

"We had a Cuisinart food processor and a bag of peanuts and we blended up our first batch of plain peanut butter. We decided we weren't happy with just the plain, so we started throwing in all these ingredients that we had already been eating with peanut butter, like honey, pretzels, chocolate, and cinnamon."

The women told About Face their business' inception and success was "serendipitous," as Welsh had just gotten the mixer as a Christmas gift. The ingredients to make the product tasty -- trail mix -- was always on hand in their home. It was also fortunate that they introduced their peanut butter at a time when natural foods had just begun exploding in the marketplace.

A new season of Shark Tank starts in September on ABC. Barbara Corcoran is set to be back among the cast.

[Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images]