Dragons’ Den Ride25 Pitch

We have had lots of positive feedback since our appearance on Dragons’ Den – and Peter Jones seems to have also taken a bit of a battering on social media as a cyclist hating petrol head – I think he may also be a victim of the BBC Dragons’ Den editing team!

I thought I would share a few of our thoughts and also what we actually pitched – as our pitch was highly edited.  This is only to be expected as we were in The Den for about 1 hour 45 mins…  so they have a lot of footage to get into 12 mins.  Also they need to spend a lot of time writing the puns for Evan Davies to roll out in his links – I’ve never really noticed how cheesy some of these actually are!  I also feel the editors are trying to edit the clips for the most dramatic ‘will they won’t they?’ TV rather than showcasing the business in its best light – again I completely understand this after all it’s TV entertainment – not a business documentary!

Some feedback was that we could have articulated the business better and, based on the edit – I do agree with you.  Please read on and see what we actually pitched.

Here is the clip from the show in case you haven’t seen it:

The actual pitch

Here is my unedited script I wrote for my pitch (whilst in the passenger seat of a Ride25 van on the way back from a tour in Italy!).  We perfected this and got it down to exactly 3 minutes as required by the Den production team:

In this colour font are the parts of our pitch that were edited out.

Hello, My Name is John Readman – I’m the Founder and MD of The Ultimate Cycling Adventure Holiday Company Ride25. I’m here today looking for an investment of £250,000 in return for a 25% stake in Ride25.

I was looking for an adventure when a friend suggested why not cycle to all the way Australia.

As amazing as that would be, we all have responsibilities that stop us from running off to the other side of the world.   But it did get us thinking, why not do it one stage at a time?

So we sat down and split the distance into 25 legs, with a new cycling adventure every year.

Each tour covers about 355 miles in around 4 days, this idea has now become Ride25, The Ultimate Cycling Adventure Holiday company..

We enable anyone, no matter of size or shape, whether you’re a novice or keen cyclist, to cycle all the way from the UK to Sydney, Australia.

There’s no pressure for customers to commit to whole thing, they can just sign up for one at a time if they wish, but they can chose do all 25 legs … which many of our customers say they are planning to do and they want to get the badges to prove it!

Our riders can go at their own pace and our crew facilitate a great experience whether you are flying along at 20mph average as a peloton or taking it easy and enjoying the views.

We organise everything for our clients, personalised cycling team kit, hotels, meals, medics, mechanics, support team and support vehicles, so they can just enjoy the riding.

Ride25 partners with the charity called Re-Cycle, and for everyone who joins us on one of our cycling tours, Ride25 fund the donation of a bike to someone in Africa.

We have 3 core markets we are focus on – Corporates, Charities and the biggest opportunity of all Cycling holidays for consumers so they can explore the world leg by leg.

We are not just about the challenging cycling though, it’s about shared experience, amazing food, brilliant scenery and local culture. A bit like a ski holiday on a bike.

Last year we took 250 people cycling and have already done our first tours for 2015 – and have nearly 1000 cyclists booked in for this year.   We expect to make a net profit in 2015 of £150,000 from a Turnover of £1.3 million. We will grow the business year on year by 1000 additional cyclists each year. Our corporate clients include ; Google, DTZ, Liberty Global, Infor, Mace, SkyBet.   We work with many charities, some of which are: 1moreChild, Dame Kelly Holmes Trust, Help for Heroes, RAF Benevolent Fund, Lessons for Life Foundation.

In 2018 we take 4000 people cycling, our turnover will be £5.1M and Net Profit £900K.

I would now like to give you your personalised Ride25 jerseys and caps, and ask you which Ride25 leg would you like to cycle first!

As you can read some key parts were edited out, which was a little bit frustrating.  We then had a really engaging and enjoyable chat with the Dragons include Peter Jones.  Who actually loved the charitable elements of what we are doing with Re~Cycle and the fact we are giving people a goal to get and keep fit every year.

We thought we would share this with you as many people have been interested in what actually happened.  We will do another blog later on this week about that and the behind the scenes view of Dragons’ Den, and if we’d do it again knowing what we know now!