´óÏó´«Ã½

20 year old full time student Jess Ratcliffe has spotted a business opportunity in the gaming market, but will she be able to convince the dragons to play along?

Entrepreneur Jess came up with the idea for GaBoom, an online user-to-user video game exchange, when she was 15 but with only her pocket money to invest the idea has been on hold until now.

Jess confidently and concisely makes her pitch, claiming that there is not only a market but also a need for her business, with impressive stats of the numbers of video game users, smiling Jess welcomes questions.

Duncan Bannatyne is intrigued and wants to know how Jess makes money from the business? Jess replies with precise profit figures so Duncan goes on to question Jess’ claim that GaBoom provides faster exact search results than any other website. As Jess explains the technology Duncan concludes that Jess’ claim is due to it being the only site of its type. Jess cheekily agrees with Duncan building on her assured start

James Caan questions the name of the business, which Jess confidently justifies, as well as unveiling her commitment to the project by pausing her university degree. James goes on to ask about the marketing strategy of the company as he sees it as the make or break of the business. Jess replies with connections that she has already made to other websites including the largest gaming, social networking sites.

This sparks the interest of Deborah Meaden who asks about the scale of the marketing strategy, despite Jess not having secured an advertising contract she is handling the cross examination well.

Peter Jones who knows the market well finds a flaw in the plan. Physically handling each of the games is massively costly, especially as the business scales up. He declares himself out.

James and Deborah join Peter in stating themselves out. Theo Paphitis explains the cardinal sin that Jess is committing in mixing the physical and virtual in an online business. Theo is out but is sure that Jess will make it at some point.

Duncan takes a moment to anecdotally reflect on not going to university himself and encourages Jess to go back to university as he declares himself out.

After a deluge of praise and rare admiration Jess leaves the den with no offer apart from an unexpected job offer from Peter.Ìý

The deal done in the Den:

No investment

Last updated: 13th September 2010