This morning we attended the second day of the BUSINESS NORTHWEST event to see Doug Richard give a talk about his career. You may remember Doug for his stint on BBC 2’s DRAGON’S DEN. He told us he had two Dragon’s Den records. One for the least number of investments made, and one for the most offers rejected by the entrepreneurs.

Doug was nothing like how you see him on TV, he came across a lot less serious about business, he was funny, and most significantly and surprisingly, put most of his success down to luck. That’s why we’re blogging this actually. For those out there who are starting their own studios, or will do in the future, it’s useful to know that luck may play a huge part in your success.

One of Doug’s stories of his early days in the software business (pre internet), involved a man called John. John was from IBM, and had been given an assignment. He was given a year and a bucket load of cash to find someone who develop the technology to digitally morph a picture of a large person, into a picture of a thin person. This was needed for a client of IBM who was in the health and fitness business. They wanted to install the software in their gyms. Back then, this software didn’t exist.

So by chance John walks into Doug’s office one day, tells him what he needs and ‘does he know anyone?’. Doug said ’We can do it, but it’ll cost you $10,000 for me just to think about the problem’. So basically John pulls out a cheque and Doug was left with a dilemma. He didn’t have the first clue how to come up with the software. One night shortly after, Doug’s wife was flicking through the TV channels and by chance an ad came on for a company who could digitally place a new hairstyle on a picture of your head, so you could see how you’d look before you went to the hairdressers. Doug contacted them and asked could they ‘do bodies’ too. They said yes, so Doug bought their software and tells John to get his butt over there. He then supplies it to IBM for a very tidy profit indeed.

Thoughtful are only 9 months old, yet we’ve been in situations in which if certains events had not happened, we wouldn’t be here today. Lady Luck has definitely smiled down on us a few times this year. We’ll save our story for another day.