After the Dragons' Den

I will post some more details from our experience of the Dragons' Den over the coming few days. For now, let me thank all of you who have emailed in with support following our unsuccessful attempt to raise investment capital from the investors on the TV show.

Like many who appear on the show, we have our disappointments about the way the footage was edited, paticularly in regards to my intial pitch, however I am satisfied that we left the show with some dignity.

The complete footage from episode 7 is now available on the BBC site, and I am the first entrepreneur on, so you won't have to wait long to see our bit. Visitors from outside the UK are unlikely to be able to view this, but we are still hopeful for a YouTube appearance at some point.

You may also be interested in the feedback of Doug Richards, a former Dragon, which can be viewed on the BBC site for the next week. Here is a transcript:

Steve Johnston's company, Story Code, should become a super-affiliate of the popular bookselling websites and drive traffic to the booksellers.

Richard Farleigh, who clearly has an intrinsic understanding of the opportunity is not completely correct though in saying that Steve needs to do a deal with Amazon. Steve merely needs to become a standard affiliate of Amazon. The affiliates have historically been the most likely acquisitions of the large web players and if Steve's product drives book sales then they become a good acquisition target.

Peter's assertion that "he could do it himself" is a bit silly since anyone could say that about any web start-up. Peter could have done eBay, but he didn't. And what he is overlooking is the knowledge that the developers accrue as they work through the building of the system and the site. It's the primary differentiator of web sites and services and holds true whether you are Story Code or MySpace.

Nevertheless, Steve has not clearly articulated why anyone would invest the time to answer 40 questions. That is a meaningful investment of time and attention and I suspect will prove to be the stumbling block of his business.

More soon.

Steve Johnston