Dragons' Den BBC TV Footage
As I hoped would happen, YouTube has been furnished with the StoryCode pitch to the Dragons in the Dragons' Den, the BBC TV show for entrepreneurs. I also include the complete transcript of my initial three minute pitch, which was edited to around half its original duration, missing critical information. Richard Farleigh's closing comments about StoryCode being a competitor to Amazon are wide of the mark. We hope that Amazon will become a customer, not a competitor, of StoryCode at some point in the future. Enjoy:
StoryCode complete pitch to the Dragons:
Hello. I am Steve Johnston and I am the founder of StoryCode; I'm looking to raise £200,000 and am prepared to offer 20% of the business in return.
StoryCode is a business that depends on software and the web, which aren't easy to demonstrate in this environment, so I will tell its story in a more tangible way. The business problem we are solving is that too many visits to bookshops, both on the high street and on the web, simply don't result in sales. It is a big and recognised problem for the industry with two out of five people buying nothing because they can't decide what to buy. They struggle, as we all do, because they can't judge a book by its cover. StoryCode is here to help. 3 out of 5 people (points to three Dragons) do buy, so you are not an obvious part of the problem at this point. That leaves you two (points to the two Dragons) who typically won't buy. At least, not yet.
Richard (focuses on Richard Farleigh), imagine you have read all the books by that author, have run out of reliable recommendations and are flummoxed by the choice available. StoryCode is going to help you. "I've read all the Dan Brown books; What else have you got like The Da Vinci Code?" you say. In my role as shop assistant, with complete confidence, and despite knowing nothing about these books, I can answer with: "You should try State of Fear by Michael Crichton or Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson."
StoryCode can do this because we have condensed the narrative of these stories into a form of mathematical DNA that can be built into shop tills and web sites throughout the book world. And we collect these codes from the people whose opinions of these stories matter most; their readers. And this is a profoundly better way of doing things than is currently happening on Amazon's web site, which is based on what books people buy, nothing to do with the story itself.
If we are successful and influence 1 out of 2 people who weren't going to buy, to buy, we can create over £100m of extra revenue for the book trade, per year, in the UK alone. StoryCodes will make the difference in generating this extra revenue, and booksellers will pay for the privilege of using them. We estimate we will earn around £15m over three years, from them, across an initial six international territories, on a very profitable model.
And that's just the beginning. Our StoryCodes are valuable to authors and publishers as well – to the extent that we predict a further £6m of revenue from services to them.
We have recently signed our first contract, with the world's most famous bookshop, Foyles of London, and are talking to a number of other international retailers, such as Abebooks.
Early on we also recognised that there are similar problems with products such as movies and video games, and perhaps even wine and art, so have worked hard to make sure our technologies can accommodate them as we grow.
The StoryCode team is very solid and experienced and includes former senior executives such as the head of business development for Amazon UK, the CFO of Yahoo Europe and the MD of The Penguin Press. We have seeded the business to date and are now looking to raise £200,000 to invest in marketing and product development, and to allow the core team to devote their full energies to the business. We are prepared to offer 20% of the business in return. To realise the investment, we would expect the business to be acquired within three to five years.
Thank you for your attention.
