Fresno State grad takes his fantasy football business to ‘Shark Tank.’ Will he make a deal?

If you know Matt Walsh, you might have guessed he would end up on “Shark Tank” at some point.

The Southern California native who graduated from Fresno State’s Craig School of Business in 2006 is a serial entrepreneur.

And “Shark Tank” is the entrepreneur’s dream.

“That is the bucket list,” says Walsh — whose company, TrophySmack, will be featured on the ABC reality show at 8 p.m. Friday.

As child, just 4 or 5 years old, Walsh sold bracelets door-to-door in his neighborhood. By middle school, he was hosting playing-card tournaments (Pokemon, not poker) out of his parents’ garage. He started a silk-screening business in high school.

His final project for the entrepreneurship program at Fresno State put Red Bull vending machines into apartment complexes near campus, and he helped open Fresno’s Young Chef’s Academy with his wife, Allie Foyerlicht Walsh.

TrophySmack was started in 2018 as an e-commerce site selling custom fantasy football trophies, championship belts and rings — everything one might need to gloat about a season’s victory. While Walsh can’t yet talk about how much money the company was looking for, or whether there were any bites from Mark Cuban or the rest of the sharks, he will say the company is a “perfect storm of a start-up.”

“It’s fun. It’s direct to consumer. It’s in your face,” says Walsh, who made the pitch with business partner Dax Holt.

Walsh himself had avoided fantasy sports throughout high school and college, but got pulled into a league once he started having kids and making friends with other dads.

“I will never be the same,” he says.

The casual sports fan became obsessed and is now in six leagues.

TrophySmack came out of Walsh’s experience trying to find a suitable trophy to celebrate his first league championship. He did a Google search and said there weren’t any really good options available.

“It’s a very localized business,” and not designed to handle the rigors of e-commerce and shipping across the country, he says.

Meanwhile, fantasy sports is a fast-growing market, but all the money is in the software, Walsh says.

“No one is really focused on making awesome products,” he says.

TrophySmack is.

Customers can get a 16-inch replica of the NFL’s Vince Lombardi Trophy (in silver of black). Or a 56-inch columned trophy topped with a silver goblet. You can also have it topped with a unicorn, or a Donald Trump or Jesus figurine, or a toilet.

The website just this week launched a new design tool that allows each trophy to be totally customized.

In applying for “Shark Tank,” Walsh and Holt saw an opportunity to find a strategic partner to help scale the company into a global brand.

“If Zappos can create a billion-dollar brand selling shoes, why can’t some bring the business of winning to the e-commerce world?” Walsh says.

The process took a year and half and included multiple rounds of “auditioning” the business. With each round came a wave of new work that needed to get done. All the while the pair was still running the business — multiple businesses in Walsh’s case — and at the end, even after the segment was taped, there was no guarantee it would ever get aired, Walsh says.

“We went through the gauntlet,” he says.

“It’s blood, sweat and tears. And then multiply that by 100.”

Other Fresno State grads on “Shark Tank”

This isn’t the first time a Fresno State grad has made in on to “Shark Tank.” In 2018, Chris Healy and Lindsay Barto pitched their company The Longhairs, which makes hair ties and other accessories for “aspiring longhairs and guys with majestic flow.”

The pair got Mark Cuban to invest $100,000 for a 20 percent stake in the company.