I was a contestant on Dragons Den

Very impressive young padawan.

Off to 'testing' now (where? what?). Who is currently leading the Barclays premiership? Post number: the first prime number ..

Adios ..
 
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britboy4321 said:
Measure cadence, after configuration, you get speed.

Literally 'pedal at 10mph for 20 seconds' .. PC timed rotation speed .. you've got your base, you can work out all other speeds.

Gearing .. able to turn it off .. but if on .. when you are going up a hill .. increase the cadence required for same speed.

Down hill -- well, you could free wheel!

It worked. Anyone who gave it a go thought it was excellent .. the whole gearing thing!! They could barely believe it and would soon naturally be free-wheeling down hills and really putting the effort in to pedal up the other side! On an exercise bike! Very nice! :)
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How? 'After configuration'?

How do you know you are doing 10mph on cheap machines? Also, unless you know the gearing ratio how is the PC going to adjust?
 
See my answers in italics

britboy4321 said:
- I made up I sold 130 units
Risky...If they decided to invest in your product, during their due diligence, the truth would've come out and even if your idea was great, based on your lies, they might've pulled out. Lying on the telly is not a smart thing to do as you will always get caught out.


- I made a loss on the whole thing
How big a loss? Was it small enough that you could recover the lost money in a few months or is this something that has set you back many years?


- DD got me about 300,000 web hits in 24 hours .. anyone that thinks that is bad business is silly
I agree 100%. DD is a great tool to advertise your product, for free. To get a single 10 minute advert on ITV1 would probably cost you a 7 figure sum.


- Sold about 43 grands worth
Not bad, but my gut says that you should've built on this. Perhaps making a mark2 version or even diversified and created something else, based on a similar principle.



- I didnt set up a bike and show it running because I couldnt be bothered to carry a bike and PC down to fleet street.
That's not smart. I think that was your single biggest mistake right there. You should've taken a friend of yours to the Dragon's Den for the day. Paid him £50 and made him responsible for lugging around the bike, in transit. Seeing the actual idea/product/service in action is the best advert for any product. Imagine if Apple (who employ arguably the best marketing team in the World today), had an advert for their IPAD, without ever showing the IPAD in the advert - how would that look? The marketing team would almost certainly be fired for something like that. Schoolboy error.
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Your big problem in that show was Bannatyne. He runs a gym chain and he told all the other Dragons and people watching the show that the idea of a cycle simulator doesn't work and he ended up throwing out the system which was given to him for free. In otherwords, he was telling people that if you gave your product for free, he still wouldn't take it.

Oh...and don't be put off by the haters in this thread. You managed to create a product, bring it to market, get on Dragon's Den and sell those items. I would challenge any of the keyboard warriors in this thread to try and do the same and lets see how far they get. Most of them wouldn't have the acumen to get a product to market, let alone get on the telly and advertise the product.

Learn from your mistakes and move on to something bigger and better.
 
Biohazard said:
How? 'After configuration'?

How do you know you are doing 10mph on cheap machines? Also, unless you know the gearing ratio how is the PC going to adjust?
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The easiest way would be to place the magnet on the spoke of the rear wheel. This is how most cycle computers (for real cycles) work. Then measure the circumerence of the rear wheel. This would allow the computer to calculate the distance travelled.

In any case, this is such a minor gripe, its not even worth arguing over. Any techie would've been able to solve the problem in a few hours.
 
Biohazard said:
How? 'After configuration'?

How do you know you are doing 10mph on cheap machines? Also, unless you know the gearing ratio how is the PC going to adjust?
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The user was told just to keep the bike in the same gear .. the gear simulation was software only.

On cheap machines we said something official sounding basically saying 'pedal at what you reckon 10mph is whilst we time the pedal rotation'. From that baseline .. everything's easy.

Honestly, that part of the product worked surprisingly well! Do you get my explanation of it (at least)??


I didn't actually want the investment .. the product was already finished. The cost was done. Just wanted the advertisement. I invented whatever percentage I offered and how much dosh I asked for about 40 minutes before filming, just copying what other people were asking for kinda ...

The loss was 'business money', as oppose to money out of my back pocket. (difference in tax). I was young, and lost perhaps approaching 6 figures .. which was a pain .. but I'd been contracting for years so believe it or not (probably not) wasn't really that bothered. Some people buy a Ferrari 355 and sell it 10 years later for nothing ... some people get divorced and lose half a house, some people buy a house at the top of a boom .. I did personal trainer, which I'd prefer to any of my previous examples. All in all, was a mental good life experience - learnt so much! Especially when I was sending 6K a month to some Russian programmers I'd never even met who had delivered nothing yet :) And getting interviewed formally by important people about why I was sending THOUSANDS abroad each month to some guys I didn't know :) Oh and copying the copyright notice out of the back of my 'the sims' manual, changing 'EA' to my company, and 'the sims' to 'Personal trainer'. Copying someone's copyright notice .. funny irony there somewhere :)

In the end gave the product and ALL rights to a friend who had irritated me for years with his moaning on about what I SHOULD have done and how HE could have sold thousands. Enjoyed the lolz as he didn't follow through with any of his super-duper ideas after some half baked attempts at some of them, and just dumped the stock on to ebay. He was all mouth and no trousers (as so many are!!)! I proved it to him! :)
 
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Britboy, we need a video of you riding an exercise bike for 200 miles while watching your pc monitor with your program running. And you have to be holding a loaf of bread.

If you don't then frankly we all think this is another of your fairy stories :D
 
britboy4321 said:
I didn't actually want the investment .. the product was already finished.
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This is smart, because the Dragons will give you a very poor percentage for the money they offer. You can get a better investment deal, outside the Den, after advertising your product on the telly.

britboy4321 said:
The cost was done. Just wanted the advertisement.
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You wanted to advertise the product, yet you didnt bring the product with you? This makes no sense at all.

Also, from what I recall, you didnt even mention a website address at anytime during the pitch (correct me if I am wrong), so if people wanted to check out your product they would have to do an extensive search to locate it.

britboy4321 said:
I was young, and lost perhaps approaching 6 figures .. which was a pain ..
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That's a fair whack.

britboy4321 said:
Enjoyed the lolz as he didn't follow through with any of his super-duper ideas .... He was all mouth and no trousers (as so many are!!)!
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Indeed. There are plenty of haters and BS'ers out there. As we are finding in this thread, there are plenty of keyboard warriors, who are happy to lam-bast your attempts, yet they themselves do not have the cahoonas to go out there and show how it should be done. I assure you, in person, they wouldn't have the guts to direct negative comments at you.

I can't recall a single person in this thread offering real/constructive advice or encouragement. All the posts in this thread are either neutral or seem to be that of ridicule and hate - that's shocking. Seriously, some people should hang their heads in shame at their behaviour/comments.
 
britboy4321 said:
The user was told just to keep the bike in the same gear .. the gear simulation was software only.

On cheap machines we said something official sounding basically saying 'pedal at what you reckon 10mph is whilst we time the pedal rotation'. From that baseline .. everything's easy.

Honestly, that part of the product worked surprisingly well! Do you get my explanation of it (at least)??
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A bit, but it isn't very good if the gradient/gear is computer simulation only?

What if you had a good excercise machine, and wanted to use all it's functionality? Pretty crap for it, no, if it prevented you doing so?
 
Biohazard said:
A bit, but it isn't very good if the gradient/gear is computer simulation only?

What if you had a good excercise machine, and wanted to use all it's functionality? Pretty crap for it, no, if it prevented you doing so?
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Yea but the idea of spending £100000 more making it connect-individually-successfully with 600 different 'good' exercise bikes so it used their inbuilt functionality ..impossible. Remember these 'good' exercise bikes hardly have nice easy USB OUT ports explaining exactly what they are doing .. so how could I getthe info into the laptop??
 
this idea was probably just a little too ahead of its time,

thinking about the tech available now I'm sure you could make an ipad app with bluetooth sensors and some kind of adjustable cradle..
 
tbh the idea is aimed at people that buy into it and never use it, its a tough market to sell to and very limited, if you want to get fit, lose weight and change your life for good, a pc/iphone app is not going to help, motivation and getting outside and doing it off the cuff is the best.

Exercise bikes are what £100+, pair of trainers £20 and you can run for miles for free, a decent bike is about £300+ but with a bike you get outside, feel better, work harder rather than sat on a stationary bike looking at a screen.
 
sunama said:
To get a single 10 minute advert on ITV1 would probably cost you a 7 figure sum.
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You can't get a 10 minute advert on ITV1. :confused:

britboy4321 said:
The loss was 'business money', as oppose to money out of my back pocket. (difference in tax). I was young, and lost perhaps approaching 6 figures .. which was a pain ..
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Magical business money? Where did it come from? I'm sorry but I don't believe you lost 6 figures and I'm not sure I even believe you sold £43k worth. Who to?

Wicksta said:
Hits or unique visitors?
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There is no chance it is unique visitors. So hits which tell us absolutely nothing.
 
britboy4321 said:
Yea but the idea of spending £100000 more making it connect-individually-successfully with 600 different 'good' exercise bikes so it used their inbuilt functionality ..impossible. Remember these 'good' exercise bikes hardly have nice easy USB OUT ports explaining exactly what they are doing .. so how could I getthe info into the laptop??
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Reverse engineer it, or use more sensor input. But then if you can't, you can't I suppose.

Plus a few of the criticisms were quite valid; the laptop itself is a burden you needed a more compact integrated design. Plus, did you really have 400 miles of scenery? I myself personally can't see me sitting on a poor exercise bike, with no real resistance, looking at a laptop with a wee dude cycling along.

I'd rather a sega mega drive with road rash on it :D :p
 
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