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Ling Valentine, a successful online entrepreneur, trumped the BBC TV show called Dragons Den and the TV show’s Venture Capital expert line-up of five multi-millionaires.
On the popular TV show each week, a batch of wannabe entrepreneurs pitch the Den in order to secure funding for as little equity release as possible. The show’s 5 multi-millionaires have eached stumped up GBP 150k of their own mpney to invest in budding entrepreneurs. After the pitch by the entrepreneurs, the Dragons then raise questions and more often than not, shoot you, your drive, innovation, dreams and hopes away in a blaze of patronising, condescending and tactless verbal putdowns.
That is until Ling Valentine appeared last week to pitch for GBP 50k to fund marketing for her already booming online business called Ling’s Cars. Ling pitched, defended her numbers, hooked, and then in a triumphant climax to her part in the show, refused to accept the funding offers from two of the Dragons. See it in full here
Why?
The publicity Ling generated has been worth tenfold the money she might have walked away with. To say that she played the show well is putting it mildly. She used the Dragons to perfection. Congratulations go to Ling for oneupping the Dragons. She did tell them that she eats dragons for breakfast.
Entrepreneur Abuses Dragons Den Millionaires
5 comments ↓
Hey, Goole Alerts are a wonderful thing, eh? Famous in SA!
I simply do my best.
Yes, the Dragons (Theo) flummoxed me a bit asking for Corporation Tax figure and Audited accounts. They knew I was a Partnership business (superhusband Jon and me) but yet they still shouted and these things are IMPOSSIBLE for a UK Partnership to provide. Still, it made good TV.
Which is what counts, to me, to the Dragons and to the BBC (best in the World for all you Americans). They filmed me for 3 1/2 hours, no wonder they got me looking zonked at some stages. The Dragons were there just over half the time.
But thanks for the comments about my pitch-and-run. It amazes me that I was the only business to offer a website - and instant gratification - to millions of ABC1 viewers. My website went through the roof.
I had over 5k unique visitors on the night, 10k Thurs, 5k Fri, 4k Sat, 4k Sunday. As I type this at 23:13 on Sunday evening there are still 46 people on my site!! Peak visitors (not “hits”) was 550!!! How my server stood up, max should be 250 visitors. And my website is far heavier than this board, some pages over 1Mb. My 3 Litre, 2GB Ram server was needing an apache restart every 30 secs
I was sat here restarting apache for 3 hours non-stop to avoid the server crashing (and it is £250 a month server!). Amazing how some businesses would not even think to stroke and cuddle their server and would just let it crash and shrug their shoulders.
God knows the bandwidth. Have been flooded with positive wishes and enquiries and offers of cash (Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh).
So all in all you see the background. But damn nice result, I was pleased with big P.
Hope this does not burst the bubble of DD, but of course it is a TV show first, the BBC want the BEST prog, I want the BEST publicity, the Dragons want the BEST ego massage or whatever, and surely no one seriously goes on to raise capital… but it may help anyone else in the same position.
Also to note: The other contenders did not make the Dragons (or the viewers) laugh. I think entertainment should ALWAYS be No1. The noodles I gave them at the beginning were “FUKU” brand - really! They loved this and it set the tone, but as I knew it could not be used on air they did not lose face - I am Chinese
I would never have publicly humiliated them. That is just a no-brainer. But it was obvious that I would not accept an offer with that gift of FUKU noodles, eh?
I want to get people laughing out loud on my website. Just like the bloody Dragons.
What is the product? Everyone in the motor industry thinks “cars”. I disagree. Product is emotion. Getting people to commit for £10-40k car on a webpage run by a Chinese bird with no franchise badge and no glitzy dealership is bloody difficult. If you have sensible suggestions on how to do it without emotionally grabbing people, please feel free to tell me.
Thanks for comment, Rob! And nice ajax, I have that all over my back-end (ooops
but will be customer-facing it soon.
Ling,
Thanks for stopping by iScatterlings to comment. I think you will find plenty more visitors at your site will be those that you have now inspired which is a great thing.
I hope your nuke missile becomes a shrine for budding entrepreneurs! So as a site of almost ‘religious’ business faith, the local council, Prescott and Blur cannot move it ! Yeah!
Robert
Rob, saw Ling on TV the other night and meant to post about her but you beat me to it, nice post. Ling is brilliant and damn funny, the fact that she comes on here and writes a comment when you see how much work she clearly has with her website!
I could occupy myself for hours on her site, uncoventionally brilliant. Ling, you’re hysterical, you have just reconfirmed my belief that the chinese are the most industrious people on earth. Good luck with what will certainly turn out to be very successful business in the long term. In chinglish - business idea ok, but Dave say invest in people, not ideas, this why Ling will be success!
Go Ling! not bowing to their demands was fantastic to watch and had me cheering in my seat. Those investors would have taken that equity and probably demanded you change elements of her business.
The business is hers and has been built on your gut feel and lots of blood and sweat! She shouldn’t change anything
Well done
A bold move from Ling (Congratulations!).
Unfortunately she is in the minority; too many think that being able to take part in a TV show like “Dragons Den” or “The Apprentice” means they have to follow all the rules.
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