Our Dragons' Den Experience
We were lucky enough to get No Story Lost onto Dragon's Den in 2022 and pitch the Dragons on our coffee table biography books.
To learn more about our biography book projects, click here!
Here are 2 things that surprised us about the Den.
[Instructions on how to watch our episode are at the end of the article!]
1) It was very real
Jeremy and I have done a lot of media stuff over the past decade - we did countless interviews and features for Mealshare, and Andrew was also on Canada's Smartest Person on CBC! We also have friends who have been on 'reality' TV shows, and heard lots of stories...
Not to name any names, but some shows and productions can be exhausting because of direction and the number of shots. Faking things, editing, and "camera magic". They're a production, and they're meant to be - TV is TV. We get it.
So when we got ready for Dragon's Den, we wondered - how many pauses will there be in the pitch? How many times will we be asked to "take that again, but this time with a little more ENERGY!" Or to smile bigger, or restate something? We prepared for the worst!
But, Dragon's Den was super real. Other than filming our walk-in twice (and staring into the Dragons' faces silently on the first take), the whole thing went down without a pause, camera change, re-take, or interruption from the producers or cameras. Which was super refreshing! It gave us a fresh respect for Dragons' Den and Shark Tank - these are real pitches!
2) It was anarchy!
We're not strangers to business pitches. We did them at business school, in business competitions, when we worked for Deloitte & PWC, for contests for Mealshare, and more.
But we're used to a certain kind of attitude and social norms in our pitches.
The pitcher speaks. The judges listen.
The judges ask a question.
The pitchers answer. The judges listen intently.
The next judge asks a question.
The pitchers answers. The judges listen.
This is not the case on Dragon's Den. Other than your protected 90 seconds at the start, it's a field day. You'll be answering one Dragon, and another will interrupt and start asking another question. You have to choose whether to finish what you're saying, or cut it off and go to the next. Then another Dragon starts asking a question, and another one tells them their question doesn't matter and starts to ask one of their own!
You really have to own the room and take control.
That's one thing we wish we knew before we went in there.
One of the producers said that they're all a bunch of grown-up kids, and like to talk over each other and mess with each other. No comment 😏
Let us know if you have any questions about the experience!
Here's our home page.
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If you're in Canada, you can watch our episode here. (Note, it doesn't work on Google Chrome - use Safari).
If not, send us a quick email here and we'll point you in the right direction for watching our episode.
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