Getting Peter the Dragon’s supportwastheBeezknees
MOST people would be terrified at the thought of entering the Dragon’s Den telly lair.
But considering that Brian Smillie and Euan McCreath have built a business based on the idea of taking on Apple’s App Store, the BBC2 series was less of a battlefield than they are used to.
The Scots duo took their revolutionary new app firm Beezer.com on to the TV show and sparked one of the toughest negotiations in the programme’s history, with four of the five tycoons bidding for a piece of the Edinburgh-based company.
The result was gripping telly and an overnight surge in business. And having secured the backing of longtime Dragon Peter Jones, the entrepreneurs are now hoping to build a £1billion company.
Brian revealed technology specialist investor Peter was their top target.
He said: “We went in for Peter Jones and we came out with Peter Jones, so we were delighted.
“At the end of the day, it’s not just about the money, it’s and fist-bumping in the lift. We couldn’t quite believe what had happened. We’re obviously delighted with how it went.
“The exposure on Dragon’s Den was huge at bringing people on to the platform.
“Typically, we would look at 1000 users in a month. Over the two-day period following the show we had 40,000.”
Brian came up with the idea for Beezer.com while working in digital marketing in Australia.
He sold two houses and his collection of Banksy art to fund the company’s start-up four years ago and they finally went live last year.
He said: “The app store model is a broken model.
“Eight out of 10 apps never make it out the store. They just sit there till they die of neglect, so the idea was coming up with a concept that enabled people to produce their own app without huge upfront costs, but to be able to market and promote the app under their own control.
“We want to build the business and if we want to become that next unicorn, we have a hard road ahead of us.”