Tej Lalvani and Sam Jones: 'Nearly everything is possible'

In this episode, Anna Jordan meets Dragon Tej Lalvani and entrepreneur Sam Jones.

We discuss how pitching on Dragon's Den from both sides.

You can also visit smallbusiness.co.uk for more on perfecting your investment pitch. 

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Hello and welcome to Small Business Snippets, the podcast from SmallBusiness.co.uk. I’m your host, Anna Jordan.

Today we have Tej Lalvani and Sam Jones – one is CEO of Vitabiotics and Dragon on Dragon’s Den and the other is an entrepreneur who, according to Touker Souleyman, gave one of the best pitches he’s ever seen in the Den.

Sam went into the Den looking for £60,000 in exchange for ten per cent equity of his internet browser company, Gener8. Wowed by the pitch, Touker Suleyman and Peter Jones teamed up to invest in the entrepreneur, leaving Tej and Deborah Meaden with cash in their pockets.

Tej sought out Sam after the show, becoming one of a group of high-profile investors to back the firm.

After four years on the show, Tej will be stepping back from Dragon’s Den later this year to focus on growing Vitabiotics.    

We’ll be talking about making a pitch – from both sides of the Den. 

Anna: Hi guys, how you getting on?

Sam and Tej: Hi Anna, how are you?

Anna: Yeah, doing really, really well. Thanks.

Sam: Awesome. Good to be here this afternoon. Thanks for having us on.

Right, we've got quite a bit to get through, as you've heard in the intro. I'll start with you, Sam, talk us through the process of going on Dragon's Den and anything that stood out to you particularly.

Sam: Well, wow, I mean, what an experience. It'd be hard to put that into 30 seconds. But really quickly, I start with what's happened since and then I'll jump back to what happened during so.

Since Dragon's Den, the reaction has been incredible. The pitch went viral. With about 20 million views on Facebook and other five million views on LinkedIn, we were averaging a new download every ten seconds for about seven or eight weeks. Off the back of that, more than 30 different press outlets wrote about us. We used this momentum to raise a modest round of funding, which we were super fortunate to be able to include. Of course, Tej Lalvani and bringing him on board alongside people like Tinie Tempah (the rapper) and Harry Redknapp (the football manager). It's been a whirlwind since Dragon's Den, which is amazing.

Going back to the pitch – God, I mean, this was a hell of an experience. I think that we all know, from watching it on TV, that when you walk through those doors, and you come out of that lift, anything can happen. Of course, from the entrepreneur’s perspective, you hardly sleep the night before, because you're just so nervous. So, you're standing there in this lift, light-headed and the butterflies are multiplying in your stomach and you're trying your best just to hold it together. But then your head's getting noisier – you can't even remember your opening line – and you're just trying to tell yourself to breathe. And then there's that moment where the doors open, and you walk out to the left. It's total silence. You see the Dragons sit