On October 7th, BCTIA Centre4Growth company Daily Delivery, made a special appearance on the season 10 premiere of Dragon’s Den Canada! Daily Delivery is a local company that makes it simple for businesses get their own online ordering platform, connect with local delivery specialists, and start offering on-demand deliveries to their customers.

Dragon’s Den visits cities from coast to coast in a quest to find Canada’s next great batch of entrepreneurs, and conducts auditions to select about four hundred teams to pitch to the Dragons.

We sat down with Daily Delivery to ask them about their experience “in the den.”

Tell us about a little bit about the experience overall – what was the process like? How long did it take?

One day we got a call from a friend saying that there was a Dragon’s Den audition going on, so we thought it’d be fun to go check it out and figure how we could prepare for the next year. There was a panel of 3 individuals, one individual from the production team, assessing how “T.V friendly” the presentation is, and two other individuals assessing other business related metrics, i.e margins, traction, revenue, and team structure. The Q&A took about 20 minutes.

A few weeks later we got an email congratulating us on being chosen to pitch to the Dragons! Our actual pitch was scheduled for May 7th and that Q&A took about 50 minutes.

What was the most challenging part of this experience?

It was challenging to be aware that we had no control whatsoever over what would be aired. We had about an hour of Q&A, but we knew that the producers would trim it down to 5-7 minutes. It was also challenging to put a price tag on Daily Delivery, but it was necessary given that the opening is scripted and we had to follow the format; “We are looking for $X , in exchange for X% equity in our company Name”. We asked the producers if we could pitch in convertible equity notes, so we could defer setting a valuation to a later stage, but they said that this wouldn’t be “T.V friendly”, as the average audience would get confused by discount rates and cap structure.

What was your favourite moment of this experience?

When we had Michele Romanow defending our business model. She is the most tech savvy Dragon on the show, and the fact that we got a pat on the back from her was all that we could have hoped for.

What do you think made you stand out from the other companies that competed in Dragon’s Den?

The mustache and the bowties! Honestly, I don’t think there was a single factor that made us stand out among others, rather it was a combination of story, numbers, timing, and the stage of the business. Perhaps, if we had not yet launched the business and we were at our early stages of concept validation, we would not have even gotten through the auditions.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to get on Dragon’s Den?

What are the next steps for Daily Delivery? Where are you heading?

From an operational standpoint, we are preparing to launch our next two Canadian markets, Toronto being the first. Gladly, ever since our Dragon’s Den episode got aired, we have been getting partnership requests from all across Canada, which enables us to leverage their delivery volume when we launch in their cities.

What’s the best piece of advice you have received to date?

If you don’t like something change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

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To watch Daily Delivery on Dragon’s Den, click here.
To learn more about BCTIA Centre4Growth initiatives, click here.