It's official–ArtResin will be featured next season (season 10) on CBC's Dragons' Den! (video update at bottom of post!)
For those who may not be familiar with it, Dragons' Den is a reality TV show similar to ABC's Shark Tank, where business owners pitch wealthy potential investors to fund and partner with them for their mutual success. Dave and I are stoked for this opportunity because for years we've watched and learned from this show and dreamt of what our pitch would be like. And now that time has come!
The audition call came up last month. We were fourth to pitch (i.e. audition) to two producers, who asked a lot of questions and did seem genuinely interested in our business (...they took pics of us on their phones and asked to keep the samples we brought). They told us we'd find out in month whether we'd been accepted, but they called us back four days later and invited us to be on the show! It completely made our day :)
We've never done anything like this before business-wise, so we have lots to learn and we plan on documenting it all on this blog. In a sense our pitch session with the dragons is a lot like a PhD defense—when I got my PhD last August, I had to prepare a presentation outlining my work, then anticipate potential questions and prepare answers in advance so as not to be caught off guard. The way I defended my research is similar to the way we'll have to defend our product (our new ArtResin formula, that is) in front of the Dragons. They will ask all the hard questions they need answers to, if they're going to invest. We need to be on the ball—and then this business will sell itself. :)
Stay tuned for all our Dragons' Den updates!
