Dragons' Den contestant who was offered £90k went on to make £20m in sales
A contestant on Dragons' Den who made the tough decision to turn down a £90,000 offer says he’s got no regrets four years on as he’s since made close to a whopping £20 million in sales.
CEO and founder of StoryTerrace Rutger Bruining and marketing director Theo Brainin featured on the show back in 2019 where they introduced their unique life-story business idea.
StoryTerrace offers people the chance to craft a special 60-page memoir about their lives.
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The hardback book is written by a ghost-writer and is based on four-hours of interviews with loved ones. Fancy, eh?
The idea was attractive enough to former Dragon Tej Lalvani, who offered the duo £90,000 for a five percent share in their company, which Rutger agreed to on camera.
However, when it came to hammering out the details at a later date, he made the unusual decision to turn the offer down.
In an interview with Metro in 2020, he said: "They all really loved the product.
"They loved what we were trying to do. Some wish they had certain family members they wish they had a book about.
“We even created book covers for them with an example of some parts of their lives, so they all got their own books.”
However, when the cameras stopped rolling, Rutger admits that while he and Lalvani were initially on the same page, the partnership lost momentum and he ended up turning it down.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, he explained: “In the Den, there is only room to agree an investment at a much higher level than you would in a normal business setting.
“A couple of months after the recording, Tej and I therefore got together for breakfast. We managed to agree further details around the vesting of his advisory shares.
“Coming to a satisfactory legal structure for the investment was more complex. In the end the process lost momentum and it was better for both sides to move on.”
But it certainly hasn’t let that hold him back, as Rutger also revealed that after turning the offer down he managed to secure investment 15 times the amount, and at a higher valuation.
“We raised 15 times the amount of investment we asked for, at a higher company valuation than we had pitched at the time,” he explained.
According to The Sun, since the company first launched back in 2015, they’ve made £18.5 million in sales.
Topics: BBC, Money, TV and Film, Dragons Den
Claire Reid