Where Are They Now?
For Dragon's Den fans, there is a special episode this Thursday (usual time), following up with a selection of entrepreneurs who pitched their ideas to the dragons in the last series.
Evan Davis finds out if any of the budding entrepreneurs who pitched their business ideas to five multi-millionaires in the second series have been successful. Includes Graham Whitby and Barry Haigh, who braved the Dragons twice with their invention, the Baby Dream Machine; and Dominic Killinger, who came up with the idea of wi-fi access for marinas, and gained investment from two of the Dragons. Is he on his way to becoming the first Dragons' Den millionaire?
Should be interesting to see who got investment and failed, and who didn't get investment and made a success of their product 
Oh, and if you missed an episode this series, they're all online at bbc.co.uk/dragonsden
Comment by burt — September 24, 2006 @ 9:06 am
I was surprised that the series had already ended (in terms of those presenting ideas)…seems like we've only had 4 or 5 episodes, but we must have had 8 ?
Comment by burt — September 24, 2006 @ 9:08 am
I think it said in the Radio Times that this series was going to 10 programmes - and I believe we've had 8 so far, so perhaps there will be 2 "where are they now" programmes, covering Series 1 and Series 2? That'd be good.
Comment by Bob Norburn — September 24, 2006 @ 6:33 pm
Not sure how the other folks have done since they've been on Dragons Den, but my little project is rolling along quite well.
I went on the show with a radically different way to shave "Ultra Shave", a project that I'd been working on for around 7-8 years at the time.
I didn't get any funding from the Dragons, and in the recording of the show we had a right do at each other, but they don't show that on TV, grin.
Since I was on I have been approached by a number of companies that now sell Ultra Shave via their web sites, and sales are going very well, last production run was 25,000.
After the dust had settled I was contacted by Rachel {who chewed me up on the show} and from Theo {a great guy actually}, Theo loves the product but I'd already signed up with a marketing company who'd seen the show, so nothing came of it with Theo. As for Rachel well we went head to head during the recording, but since then we have learned a lot more about each other and are almost the best of buddies now.
The show did help me, even though I had less than 2 minutes coverage, but that was seemingly enough for folks to contact me and ask for further and betters, and from that I'm now doing well selling Ultra Shave in the UK not just on the www, but also in some very classy salons acrodss the UK, and more recently into Canada {where I am now} and the US.
Dragons Den is a baptism by fire, and I idn't mind that, I was up for it, but I think they should be a little easier on some of the folks as they have laid their dreams on the line in public, infront of millions, and it's easy to trash them just to get the Ratings up,but it's a bit too close to being a blood sport to me. I wonder if the Dragons are really there to give serious consideration to the folks who come on the show or if they are there just to massage their own ego's, look at the displays of arrogance and uncalled for aggression towards the innocent victims.
Anyway all in all I wish Dragons Den had been more like the "Tomorrows World" type of format, a showcase for British Inventiveness, but it's more "fashionable" to drag folks down rather than say good luck to them. Maybe that says something about the state of the nation.
Rant over
Bob Norburn.