For Shark Tank's Biggest Winner, Business Has Been Scary Good The production company Ten Thirty One, which puts on Halloween-inspired interactive events, landed $2 million from Mark Cuban and is poised for expansion.

Fear has been a healthy business driver for Melissa Carbone, the mad scientist behind Los Angeles-based Ten Thirty One Productions. Named for Halloween, Carbone's favorite holiday, the company scares the bejesus out of willing customers at interactive events, including the Haunted Hayride (a tractor-drawn trek through the abandoned Griffith Park Zoo) and Ghost Ship (which sails out on short horror cruises). Ten Thirty One events feature costume-clad actors, lavish special effects, spine-tingling original music and a deluge of simulated severed limbs, bodily fluids and related horror props.

"People love to be scared, but in a safe environment," Carbone says. "To be scared when you can actually be hurt or when there is real danger, that's obviously not fun. But that adrenaline of being scared in a safe environment--people will consume that all day long."

Carbone--a former senior manager at Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, where she organized events across multiple corporate platforms--launched the company in 2009 along with Alyson Richards, who remains Clear Channel's vice president of strategic partnerships.