Author: Jonathan Symcox

“The branding is terrible,” says Jones.

He asks them to do a 30-second advert.

“Where is the call to action?” he asks. “Where is the ‘why’? Why should I buy it?”

Vegans need B12 in their diet, they counter.

Meaden is a vegan…

Author: Jonathan Symcox

They also have a design agency with 15 staff and £1.5m turnover.

“This is a side project,” says Bartlett. “Are we investing in your hobby?”

Author: Jonathan Symcox

“It’s just seasoning,” says Mrs Symcox. “Am I missing something?”

Wicks concurs and likens the product type to something on the surface in a fish tank. “What is nutritional yeast?”

The duo are asking for £100k for 20% of the business.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Next up are Stephen Wildish from Swindon and Sam Fresco from London, who are seeking investment in their vegan seasoning business, Notorious Nooch.

Their product, a high-protein, B12-rich nutritional yeast, is sold in 600+ retailers including Holland & Barrett and Whole Foods.

Priced at £4.50 a pack, it is aimed at consumers seeking a healthy, plant-based boost to their meals.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Sara Davies is OUT. Although like Jones, she applauds the motivation to educate kids.

Bartlett is OUT.

Meaden also won’t be investing.

Touker Suleyman is also OUT.

Wicks offers a bit of hope… “I bet you’re a great Dad!” he says, and urges him to produce longer-form content. But will he invest?

No.

He’s not too dishreatened, though. “I love my business, and it’s going to continue – with or without the Dragons.”

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Peter Jones is having none of it. “This is a dinosaur of a business,” he tells Chris.

He says a business like this needs scale. But how?

Jones is OUT.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Decent figures for a one-man business, despite a big hit during COVID.

Ranger Chris admits that growth is stagnant however; hence the theme park idea.

With millions of social followers and YouTube subscribers – but relatively low viewers on long-form videos, as ascentained by Steven Bartlett – there seems to be an appetite.

Deborah Meaden asks about location and he mentions a site in Swansea.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Ranger Chris is looking for £100,000 for a 15% stake to help build a Dinomania Base Camp attraction.

He is no stranger to national TV, having reached the semi-finals of Britain’s Got Talent in 2022.

“What a pitch!” says Joe.

“My background’s in window fitting,” replies Chris…

Author: Jonathan Symcox

First into the Den is Chris Roberts, known to audiences as Ranger Chris. 

The 42-year-old from Aberdare, Wales, arrives with a prehistoric companion to pitch Dinomania, a live dinosaur experience company combining entertainment and education for children.

The Dragons look shocked by the raptors (I think) as they swing into the Den!

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Former Manchester United star turned entrepreneur Gary Neville has become the frontrunner to join the Dragons’ Den line-up following fellow Northern Leader Sara Davies’ imminent departure from the BBC One show.

The hit show returned to screens last week, but the BBC has yet to confirm who will replace Davies, who joined the panel in 2019 and quickly became a fan favourite.

So who is second- and third-favourite?

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Fitness entrepreneur and TV personality Joe Wicks returns to the Dragons’ Den panel tonight as a celebrity guest, following his debut in January 2025.

The Body Coach founder will join regular Dragons Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Sara Davies, Steven Bartlett and Touker Suleyman for the second episode of the hit BBC show since its return.

Wicks has already featured in Series 22 before its hiatus, along with other guest stars Emma Grede and Trinny Woodall, but is back again tonight to see pitches ranging from dinosaurs to FemTech.

We’ll be live from 8pm.

Leeds’ leading technology businesses are set to collaborate during this year’s Women in Tech Week to deliver two unique Girl Tech initiatives aimed at addressing persistent gender imbalance in the industry.

Led by social value specialist Ahead Partnership, Girl Tech Plus and Girl Tech on Tour will support more than 100 young women from schools and colleges across the city region, in partnership with Optum and Leeds City College respectively.

Both initiatives are designed to strengthen gender inclusivity in the city’s digital future by broadening awareness of career pathways in technology and giving participants direct access to female role models already working in the sector.

Go Live Data is relocating to new premises within Manchester’s Northern Quarter.

The MarTech has made several new recruits in the last year and has a growing list of UK and international clients.

Since its launch in 2020, the Go Live Data 20-strong team has developed a portfolio across the UK, Ireland, USA and Canada. Amazon Business, AXA Health, Premier Line insurers, as well as hotels and resorts brand IHG, are just some of the companies it is working with.

The UK Agri-Tech Centre has appointed Steve McLean as CEO.

McLean, currently head of agriculture & fisheries sourcing at M&S, has a track record in the retail, agricultural and fisheries sectors, and has worked extensively across the supply chain.

He will step into the role on 27th January 2026.

LaunchDarkly, described as a comprehensive feature management platform, has launched Vega, an AI-powered diagnostic agent that identifies root causes and recommends fixes for software regressions at the moment of release.

Developers are under increasing pressure to ship code at speed as organisations move from yearly to seasonal to agile deployments. Further, the rise of AI-assisted ‘vibe coding’ is accelerating that pace even more, increasing the volume of code shipped and with it the risk of buggy software reaching production.

Vega will support organisations to move faster without risking customer trust. It eliminates the ‘needle in a haystack’ debugging process by analysing logs, traces, metrics and session replays in real time. It automatically surfaces root causes, generates incident timelines, and recommends fixes, helping developers act before customers are impacted.

Manchester’s £1.7bn innovation district Sister has appointed a new head of innovation to join its leadership team.

Dr Karim Bahou will spearhead the global development of Sister’s ecosystem, focusing initially on growing the early-stage ecosystem at the Renold Building and helping accelerate the growth of ambitious startups.

The new hire coincides with the one-year anniversary since Sister’s official launch and the opening of the Reynold Building – its flagship building.

Bahou earned his PhD in the field of organic chemistry from Imperial College and has held academic research positions at Imperial College, CSIRO (Australia), and the University of Liverpool. He has also held senior consulting roles at Plexal and FIS360 Ltd., where he facilitated cross-sector collaboration between government, academia, industry leaders and SMEs to drive technological innovation.

Bradley Topps, Project Director at Sister and Chief Commercial Officer for Bruntwood SciTech, said: “We’re delighted to welcome Karim to the team as Head of Innovation. He joins us at an exciting time, as we celebrate the one-year anniversary of Sister and look to build on the strong foundations we’ve laid to grow and strengthen our ecosystem.

“Karim will be at the forefront of shaping this next phase of the project, identifying gaps and driving forward collaboration between key groups in our network to ensure we provide innovative entrepreneurs with the support they need to succeed.”

UK investor Fuel Ventures has led a £200,000 pre-seed investment round into Canadian AI-powered data intelligence platform VRFY.

Founded by Jeff Meyers and Mike Willford, two veteran police officers with over 60 years of combined law enforcement experience, VRFY’s secure AI transcription technology streamlines the analysis of audio and video evidence.

The investment will accelerate adoption in UK police forces and support expansion into other critical sectors such as healthcare and the NHS.

Elbow Beach has co-led a £3.65m funding round into sees.ai, a Chichester startup building autonomous drone technology now being deployed by National Grid for critical infrastructure inspection.

sees.ai’s proprietary technology enables the remote operation of complex, close-quarter missions nationwide around live power lines, oil and gas assets, nuclear facilities, railways and other critical infrastructure.

The company is backed by Boeing and was the first in the UK to secure Civil Aviation Authority authorisation for routine Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) missions.

Lifted Ventures has announced the launch of its 2025–2027 5-Point Manifesto, a new roadmap for systemic change that will accelerate women’s wealth, confidence and opportunity across the UK regions.

The announcement was made by co-founders Jordan Dargue and Helen Oldham at the firm’s Athena Festival in Leeds, the largest female founder event outside of London, on Lifted’s two-year anniversary.

Author: Patrick Killeen

In a world where it seems that software developers build educational platforms, you rarely see that flipped on its head.

However, that is exactly what Helen and Steve Edwards did when they launched Tapestry in 2012.

The duo were looking for a way to make life a little easier for nursery staff and for parents desperate to see what their children got up to each day.

Back then, Helen was running a nursery attached to the couple’s home. “We used to make special books for every child – photos, cut-outs, notes – lovely, but time-consuming and expensive,” she recalled.

“One night, Steve said, ‘Surely we can do this online now with iPads and cameras.’ And that’s when Tapestry was born.”

Today, the platform – created under the umbrella of Steve’s company, The Foundation Stage Forum – is used in around 15,000 schools and nurseries across the world, with roughly 95% in the UK.