Reflection on Dragon's Den

Well, I've never written a single blog in my life, if it's not assigned by Dr. David, I think that I will never write a blog for the rest of my life. The purpose of this blog is to reflect on an episode of “Dragon’s Den” of our choice. Wow! It’s sounds like a cool title right? At least for me it is, it sounds something like “Games of Thrones” or some other epic drama, but it turned out that it is reality television programme in which entrepreneurs get to pitch their business ideas to five “dragons”, the multimillionaires, yet the Dragons get to evaluate and make their decisions on whether to invest or not.  I randomly picked one episode to watch, which is season 15, episode 14 as I had no idea what was it about.

In this episode, the first entrepreneur introduced a business called “Playbrush”. It was basically a smart device that can transforms any normal toothbrush into gaming controller and later on connect to a device such as smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth, thus the kids are able to play video game while brushing their tooth. If I were one of the dragon, I would have a great interest in the business as this product was capable in solving the problems faced by parents. On top of that, children market is also very huge and profitable. However, the initial offer by the entrepreneur was a hundred thousand pounds for a 1% stake in the business. What the fuck? 1% stake? Seriously?! In addition, the business is currently making a loss of around 1million pounds, thus it made the deal less attractive. The dragons made counteroffers ranging from 5-10% stake in the business but eventually the entrepreneurs turned it down and left with nothing. I was surprised that the offers were turned down because 5-10% shares are not really a big portion and the investment is what the business really needed. It was not really a smart move, was it?

Looking into the second business pitched by the partners, a 20 years experienced therapist and a 30 years experienced in sports businesses. They had introduced a product called “Gravity” which is to cured the back pain effectively and aimed to raise 25,000 pounds for a 10% shares in return. In my opinion, there are quite a big amount of people who are actually suffering from the back illness and the product invented by the partners could be the saviour for them and eventually make a good fortune out of it. However, it was brought to my attention that the product does not possess any legit certificate or approval from the clinics. Moreover, it was only a pending patent and trials done by the therapist over the last three years to support the credibility of the product. It may sound convincing but it involved an immense risk if the dragon were to put their money into the business as the product was lack of proof.   As a result, all of the dragons had rejected the offer and it was reasonable for me because if I was in their position, I would have definitely done the same thing unless it was clinical proven.

Next, the third participant was a woman who was offering 50,000 pounds investment into her business for 20% shares, which produces modern cloth nappies and accessories. I believe the main selling point of the business is that the designed nappies are environmental friendly as it could be reuse for many times, thus it could beat the market shares of disposable nappies. Judging by the look and design of the products, the quality itself is commendable and there are many patterns hence it could attract the new generation parents. However, the business is really small which on captured a total of 23,000 pounds sales in year 2017 and it requires a large amount of time in order for the business to grow. Therefore, the pitch was turned down by 4 dragons and only one dragon made an offer to the businesswoman. The offer was to acquire half of the business and it was 30% more compare to the initial offer. Wow, a huge appetite there from the dragon, right? I mean, this is how the business world runs, it is cruel but the businesswoman had no other choice beside accepting the offer because she needed the fund and connection to build her start-up business.

The last participant was pitching the gins business that crafted by himself and currently making a turnover of 85,000 pounds. Nevertheless, his is working as a contracts engineer in oil and gas industry and he had been in that position for 17 years long. He only uses his spares time to run his business thus I was so concerned how the hell could he managed to do that? If I were to do the same thing I would be extremely exhausted and torn apart. Overall, the business itself is beautiful as the specially made gins have a good taste with a nice packaging and selling at a reasonable price. Of course I didn’t get to taste the gin but feedbacks were given by the dragons.

In short, Dragon’s Den is a really worth watching reality television programme as it shows the audience how does the businessman pitch their brand to the investors and there are a lot of critical points mentioned by the dragons. However, in my point of view, I wonder that would there be conflicts of interests or communication failure occur in the process of the investments? I mean, the dragons barely know the businessman so it is questioned whether they are trustful or the business itself might not be as sexy as it looks behind the scene?