BEANS WORTH THE INVESTMENT

OUR JOURNEY ONTO DRAGONS DEN

Hi! Amelia here, founder of Bold Bean Co - the brand you may have seen, not just on supermarket shelves and whilst scrolling on Instagram recipe reels, but also on Dragons Den. YIKES!

I’ve watched the show since being a kid - seen Levi do his dance, tangle teaser get rejected, so it was VERY SURREAL watching myself pitch my bold beany dream.

It was a completely nerve-wracking experience and I’d be lying if I said the past year (did you know I actually went into the den in June?!) was relaxing. But what an opportunity to share the Bold Bean Co story and hopefully inspire people like YOU to consider just how DELICIOUS beans can be.

Back in June

Given I actually went into the den in June LAST YEAR - it’s felt like a mammoth secret we’ve had to keep from you all. I’m so thrilled we can now talk about it! The build up for the episode airing was a little nerve wracking as I had NO IDEA which parts they’re going to include, or how they’re going to portray me in the edit (+ I tried to refrain from looking at tweets from strangers commenting on my outfit/accent/bean obsession!)

THE PREP

I practiced A LOT (it was needed!) - particularly with public speaking. But nothing can really prepare you for that length of time and knowing you're ALWAYS on camera.

The whole team put so much work in allowing this to happen - from training me on my numbers to picking up my workload when I took a week out to prep my pitch.

We even set up our own den, where the team became (much less scary) Dragons + quizzed me on my business knowledge.

Ed aka the up + coming Peter Jones -->

NERVOUS EXCITED

I was in the Den for over an hour, but as you’ve probably seen, no entrepreneur is featured for over 15 minutes, and therefore a lot of the pitch gets cut!

The whole process was risky. But start-ups ARE risky. And this time last year, when the team and I were discussing the pro’s and cons of trying to get investment from the dragons, we figured it was worth it.

Now we've allowed the news + outcome to sink in a bit, we're just extremely excited to hopefully welcome a whole new cohort of bean obsessives (not just fire-breathing ones!)

ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS

"How did you feel going up the lift?"

Amazingly, THERE IS NO LIFT. You literally walk in + walk out. They also film you going into "the lift" at a completely different point to when you go to meet the Dragons.

How many people do the Dragons see per day?

About 4 or 5 per day! But they are SUPER long days. Some people are in there for 40 mins, some are in there for 2 hours - so the Dragons are, very understandably, extremely tired by the end of it!

What happens when you get the deal?

The dragons are filming for the whole season, so they see back to back entrepreneur after entrepreneur and are really busy, so you don't hear from them for a while.

After that you under go A LOT of the due diligence - which takes A LOT of time - and within that time, a lot can change in a business. So it's all a very long process.

Did you experience imposter syndrome?

BIG TIME. And still do. I think it's the nature of the job.

One of the upsides of being a female in business is that there's an incredible community of female-led communities out there offering support.

Scariest Dragon?!

I went in SO excited that Deborah would be the perfect Dragon as she's particularly aligned with our business values. But she did not give ANYTHING away that she was at all interested. But turns out she was just keeping her cards close to her chest + made an offer. WAHOO.