AN IMPRESSIVE entrepreneur who stunned the Dragons’ Den panel rejected a £90,000 investment offer – but doesn’t regret it at all.
Rutger Bruining, CEO and founder of StoryTerrace, and Marketing Director Theo Brainin walked away from a life-changing deal – and have made nearly £20million in sales.
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After preparing their pitch for weeks, and nervously waiting behind the scenes for six painstaking hours, the pair stepped out in front of their potential investors.
Dragon Tej Lalvani was so wowed by the business, which assigns ghostwriters to customers who wish to create personalised memoirs for loved ones, that he offered £90,000 for a five per cent share.
StoryTerrace provides a service through which four copies of a 60 page hardback book is crafted after four hours of interviews, and it costs £1,500.
Rutger told Metro: “They all really loved the product.
“They loved what we were trying to do. Some wish they had certain family members they wish they had a book about.”
However, on why they rejected the eye-watering deal, the CEO added: “We didn’t come to an agreement. It took quite a while and it just didn’t work.
“I had other options to raise money, bigger amounts to help the company grow faster.
“I don’t regret [rejecting the offer], but it would have been nice to work with them.”
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He added that the process “dragged on” and in the end he wanted the company to progress “in the fastest way”.
Rutger also told FEMAIL: “Since agreeing the deal in the Den, we raised 15 times the amount of investment we asked for, at a higher company valuation than we had pitched at the time.”
The successful entrepreneur said while discussing the deal with Tej after filming, it “lost momentum” and it was “better to move on”.
And since leaving the offer on the table, StoryTerrace has doubled its sales across the past year.
They have gone from a team of 20 to 720 professional writers to provide services for a growing client base.
And, the company has made a whopping £18.5million in sales since its launch in 2015.
“By the end of the year, we’re hoping to have over 1,000 high quality writers from a range of backgrounds”, Rutger said.
“Our goal is to make sure every family starts capturing their life stories and there is a long way to go to achieve that.”
Rutger and Theo hope to expand their reach to the United States and non-English speaking countries.
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