Dragons' Den: Moonpig founder Nick Jenkins joins Sarah Willingham and Touker Suleyman on new BBC2 panel
Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones are staying on for a thirteenth series
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Your support makes all the difference.Three new Dragons have joined the den for BBC2’s entrepreneurship TV series, including the founder of Moonpig.
Existing judges Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden will be welcoming the new faces after Duncan Bannatyne, Piers Linney and Kelly Hoppen quit after the twelfth run ended last Sunday.
Here’s a quick introduction to those filling their seats:
Nick Jenkins
If you don’t know his company, you’ll know the jingle from that advert off the telly. Jenkins studied Russian at university before founding personalised greeting card website moonpig.com. Mooooonpig dot com - that one.
He sold the company for £120 million to photobox.com in 2011 and has been investing in start-up businesses since.
“I have always preferred the start-up stage to running a larger mature business. It is a more exhilarating journey and requires instinctive, fast decision-making,” Jenkins said. “There is often not much information to analyse and the risk of failure is ever present.”
Sarah Willingham
Willingham co-founded The London Cocktail Club after her previous success turning The Bombay Bicycle Club into the UK’s largest Indian restaurant chain in the early 2000s.
Often seen on TV giving advice on saving money, she is looking forward to meeting “brilliant people with brilliant businesses to invest in and support”.
Touker Suleyman
Suleyman bought shirt shop Hawes & Curtis with his brother for just £1 and turned it into a lucrative luxury brand. He is also behind womenswear label Ghost, which he resurrected from liquidation.
“I know precisely what it takes to become a business success and I will certainly draw upon my own experiences when considering whether to invest,” he said. “I can’t wait to get started and look forward to initiating new business partnerships over the coming months.”
Prior to the announcement, rumours had been swirling that Ultimo lingerie brand founder Michelle Mone and price comparison site GoCompare founder Hayley Parsons would be joining the popular show.
For those not familiar with the format of Dragons’ Den, aspiring businessmen and women come in front of the panel of multi-millionaires to pitch their ideas, in a bid to secure cash investments.
One of the biggest success stories so far has been Michael Cotton, who raised £250,000 in 2008 with his misfuelling prevention device.
Filming on the new series will start next week before Dragons’ Den returns later this year.
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