
Dragons' Den winner has £100,000 funding withdrawn - nazwa
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-38536108
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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.

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katpas
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.

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deutronium
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.

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bottled_poe
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 for this product. There must be other
factors I've ignored, but it seems plausibly worth $20 or more if it is
actually good at what it claims to do.

~~~
pc86
Well, your _spare_ time is by definition worth $0. Nobody would otherwise be
working during the time they're looking for keys. I think it's important to do
this type of calculation for things at work or for side projects but you know
how you can not lose your keys _and_ not pay several hundred dollars for a
fob? Put them in the same place every time.

Also the fact that you can buy something nearly identical for $1.40 pretty
quickly rules out paying several hundred dollars for it.

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moomin
If spare time is worth nothing why do people purchase additional holiday?

Also, the time spent looking for keys is often spent just before going to
work, which makes you later for work than you would have otherwise been.

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arethuza
One of the things I learned over the years is that a deal (particularly an
investment) hasn't happened until it actually closes.

Kind of tough lesson to learn, especially if you've had to parade yourself on
a TV program.

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icebraining
_Kind of tough lesson to learn, especially if you 've had to parade yourself
on a TV program._

Sounds like a weird way to put it. Aren't these programs pretty much cheap
national advertising for the participants, even to those who don't get a deal?

~~~
arethuza
Yeah - that was a bad way for me to phrase it.

What I meant was that I can imagine preparing and appearing on a TV program
would be _incredibly_ distracting (getting normal VC investment is bad
enough).

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benbristow
Funnily I met those two guys at the Glasgow Tech-Scene Christmas Party at 'The
Raven'. Seemed like really nice guys with a cool product. Wonder what went
wrong with the DD.

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adgasf
Nokia used to make these. They were called "Treasure Tags".

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gunnyguy121
Too bad it didn't say why he pulled funding

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OJFord
The article seems to have been written based on nothing more than the tweet.

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robtaylor
Welcome to journalism 2015 onwards...

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kriro
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 get the distribution expertise. I have doubts
you get anything besides the money and probably lots of hassle for software.]

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dazc
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?

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pc86
Not sure about Dragons' Den but on Shark Tank they usually get called out on
this and eviscerated, especially by Cuban. Obviously they're still getting a
bump but at least the Sharks don't generally play along with it.

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cyberferret
The article didn't really clarify. Did they lose the funding mainly because
the laptop was lost at Heathrow?? Was it because of fear their IP was
compromised by the theft?

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erikb
I also misread the article at first that this was the reason for losing the
funding, but actually it's the reason for starting the startup.

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cyberferret
Yep - It's been a long day of programming here, and it is late evening and I
am tired, which is probably why I misread the article and asked for
clarification. But the downvote police are seemingly merciless... :-)

