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Dragons' Den winner has £100,000 funding withdrawn

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Dragons' Den winner has £100,000 funding withdrawn

#21

Post by torgoguys »

deutronium wrote: post #2

I saw their product on Dragons' Den yesterday. I found it rather surprising as I've bought similar bluetooth key fobs, from Aliexpress for around $1.40 each and they mentioned they where planning on selling them for around £20.

Lots of companies offer this functionality.

One that is very successful (4.5 million sold) is https://thetrackr.com. I have no affiliation--I just hear their ads over and over on lots of podcasts. They sell them for about $30 each, so they are similarly more expensive than AliExpress type ones.

Re: Dragons' Den winner has £100,000 funding withdrawn

#22

Post by devoply »

bottled_poe wrote: post #15
deutronium wrote: post #2

I saw their product on Dragons' Den yesterday. I found it rather surprising as I've bought similar bluetooth key fobs, from Aliexpress for around $1.40 each and they mentioned they where planning on selling them for around £20.

Sanity check... Let's say I'm particularly careless and so locating my keys costs me 2 hours per year more than it would without this device. (Assuming I can find my phone, which seems unlikely at this point). Also assume this product has a lifetime of 2 years. So it might save me 5-ish hours over the product lifetime. If I value my spare time at, say, $100 per hour, I should be willing to pay several hundred dollars…

It's frustrating to lose your keys. Enough of an annoyance that you might pay for a fix. Then there are those who chronically have this problem, that's another market. People with memory problems, etc.

Re: Dragons' Den winner has £100,000 funding withdrawn

#23

Post by dazc »

kriro wrote: post #13

I think it's pretty shady to air the episodes before the deal is finalized (imo, other people I know strongly disagree). They essentially get free reality TV candidates without any obligation. You can always back out if you want to. [I'd also never take any of theses TV show deals for a software company as they seem pretty bad to me. For something you sell on home shopping networks etc. it seems better because you ge…

The candidate also gets mass publicity for their product/service though whether they succeed in getting funding or not. For some, I'm guessing, this is the main motivation for going on the show?

Re: Dragons' Den winner has £100,000 funding withdrawn

#24

Post by tinodotim »

What's so special about that specific deal/product? Did I miss something?

Because it's not that special that those deals fall through. I don't know about Dragons Den, but afaik Shark Tank US as well as the german version "Die Höhle der Löwen" had seasons with 60% of the "deals made on air" not happening.

Re: Dragons' Den winner has £100,000 funding withdrawn

#26

Post by nunez »

kriro wrote: post #13

I think it's pretty shady to air the episodes before the deal is finalized (imo, other people I know strongly disagree). They essentially get free reality TV candidates without any obligation. You can always back out if you want to. [I'd also never take any of theses TV show deals for a software company as they seem pretty bad to me. For something you sell on home shopping networks etc. it seems better because you ge…

Unfortunately that's the nature of the entertainment business. As long as it makes for a good story, the details don't matter.

Re: Dragons' Den winner has £100,000 funding withdrawn

#27

Post by katpas »

tinodotim wrote: post #24

What's so special about that specific deal/product? Did I miss something? Because it's not that special that those deals fall through. I don't know about Dragons Den, but afaik Shark Tank US as well as the german version "Die Höhle der Löwen" had seasons with 60% of the "deals made on air" not happening.

Quite a few of the entrepreneurs I worked with at a UK based equity crowdfunding platform had been on Dragon's Den and the deal had since fallen through. Normally due to the terms being unreasonable compared to the other investment options they had through other angel investors.

It normally worked well for the start-up though as they used to get a lot of publicity/sales directly from appearing on the show and had found investment through other means.

Re: Dragons' Den winner has £100,000 funding withdrawn

#29

Post by anexprogrammer »

deutronium wrote: post #2

I saw their product on Dragons' Den yesterday. I found it rather surprising as I've bought similar bluetooth key fobs, from Aliexpress for around $1.40 each and they mentioned they where planning on selling them for around £20.

Well there's already tile who seem to be doing OK selling tags for £25 each. They have a remarkable burn rate for selling something so simple! $34M in 2 Rounds

Re: Dragons' Den winner has £100,000 funding withdrawn

#30

Post by stuaxo »

ju-st wrote: post #11
deutronium wrote: post #2

I saw their product on Dragons' Den yesterday. I found it rather surprising as I've bought similar bluetooth key fobs, from Aliexpress for around $1.40 each and they mentioned they where planning on selling them for around £20.

Apparently he did his own due diligence and discovered that these fobs already exist. However I'm not entirely convinced, because there is no marketing for Aliexpress goods and a fancy British startup could just sell and distribute these fobs with a nice markup. It's still a viable business I think.

Probably decided he would do it himself.

The dragons really are some of the worst people.

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