Dragons’ Den Mobile Dating Agency pitch falls short – the full story?
By Ben Robinson on Sunday, August 31st, 2008 at 9:00 AM PST In Mobile TV, Social Networking, Telecommunications, The Digital Life
The Inquirer has an interesting piece about a chap who pitched a 3G Dating Agency business concept on the popular BBC2 show “Dragons’ Den“. The main thrust of the article is that the viewing audience didn’t get to see what business owner, Romi Pamar, said during his pitch.
(Note: Dragons’ Den is a “business” reality show in which inventors/entrepeneurs/distributors etc try to convince five very wealthy investors, or ‘dragons’, that they should invest in their company. There are sections of the show where ‘highlights’ of people pitching are shown, and not the full spiel – 3G Dating Agency was one of these…)
Pamar points out on his blog that very little of what he said was shown, and that the net result of the Dragons’ declaring “I’m Out” (i.e. they don’t want to invest) was somewhat unfairly edited for TV.
Interestingly, I saw the show myself, and had mixed views on it – the presence of a QR code in the company logo put me off a bit as I haven’t seen a practical widespread use for them to-date, but I do feel for Mr. Pamar, as like he says, we didn’t get to see how good his pitch was – luckily he has a transcript on his blog, so you can make your own minds up.
It looks like Romi has also uploaded the edited TV version of his pitch on to YouTube, which you can find here.
[Via: The Inquirer]
Real Business did an article on it that gives some more info it’s something to do with Peter Jones thinking that mobile dating can only reach customers through mobile operator portals…
http://www.realbusiness.co.uk/news/finance-and-banking/5376046/peter-jones-scuppers-firms-chances-in-the-den.thtml
i’m not sure who’s right – but crazy frog did all right and that sold direct to customers and not through operator portals.
The reason it didn’t get any airtime with the dragons is because its a rubbish idea. The dating market is flooded with web sites and agencies, adding a bar code system to your agency isn’t going to make people join yours over another site.
Plus it is restricted to certain mobiles with a reader and like ben says QR codes are not widespread so you just made your potential client base even smaller.
He’s just bitter, move on try another idea!
why is he bitter?
its not about bar codes (or even qr codes) it’s about 3g mobile video calling…
it’s 3g dating not barcode dating
Don’t miss the follow up Dragons Den On Tour program on the BBC at 9pm, Wednesday 30th September 2009.