The one the Dragons missed

My business partner and I were invited to appear on the TV program Dragons’ Den (known as Shark Tank in the USA) when our business was just 10 months old. The VegTrug product was still new as a brand, and we were growing fast. We did the filming, but never appeared in the program as one of the Dragons was sick and try as they might, they could not edit around his absence.

Going through the process was interesting. I had spoken publicly to audiences of hundreds and never got nervous. On this day though, with a potential audience of 8 million, I was a little tense. We asked for too much money for a small percentage of our business and the reality was we never wanted the investment, just the publicity. One by one the Dragons fell away but by far the most positive was Theo Paphitis, who urged us to ‘keep going’. By the end of our time in the Den he understood the product and the potential, but he had already declared himself out.

It would have been a great investment for them. We sold the business in less than 2 years after our appearance which meant they would have made 10 times their investment in that period.

One lovely footnote to this episode in my career was that some 4 or 5 years later we started to sell our products through the UK retailer Robert Dyas, which is owned by Theo. I messaged him to say that, for the value of their first order with us, he could have bought 30% of the company!

VegTrug is truly one of the businesses that was a Dragons Den missed opportunity.