Sometimes when I’m in lazy-mode, I fall down YouTube rabbit holes. One of my go-tos is Dragon’s Den, which is usually good for a bit of entrepreneurial theatre. But one day, I stumbled on a clip that genuinely shocked me.
The Pitch
The pitch I want to talk about is short and simple. David Wilks1 walks into the Den and introduces his product: the Interflush. The device is a simple attachment that can be placed into any toilet, allowing users to cancel the flushing once everything is washed away.
This means that with every flush, only the water needed is used. Wilks claims that this could save up to 47% of water usage by toilets if implemented across the whole country. It’s a bold claim, but even if partially true, this product could help save the environment.
The initial reaction by the Dragons is one of disgust. They don’t want to look at their “number 2s” after they’ve used a toilet. Peter Jones especially emphasises that he doesn’t check a flush before he leaves the toilet. All I learned from this is that if I ever see a Dragon using a toilet, I won’t be using it after them.
The Dragons then get their chance to ask questions. During the questioning it’s revealed that Wilks doesn’t really have any business acumen. His first attempt to sell the product was through the water companies who, of course, don’t want it. If people are using 47% less toilet water every year, they stand to lose around £300 million a year as they aren’t selling as much water.
With no real business in place, and no clear path to profit, the investors start dropping out like dragonflies. They each say, in their own way, that they’re out. But then the last Dragon, Doug Richard, has to have his say. Rather than dropping out, he closes out with a short rant:
Let me leave you with a message. I don’t think you have a right to sit there and preach to me about how the world’s going to hell in a hand basket solely because people want to make money. Which is what you just said. I’ll give you a response to that. There’s a lot of good in making money. You want to know why it drives people to do things, innovate, create, be entrepreneurs and to change the world; and so you say the business has to make money. No it should be your drive, to drive that profit, to drive this product, and because of that you are not going to succeed; and so my message back to you is I would get off your holy horse.
Doug Richard, Dragon’s Den
I was stunned. Could he hear himself? Did he listen to a word the man in front of him was saying? Did he not realise how stupid he was making himself look?
Wilks leaves the Den with nothing. After he descends the stairs, Duncan Bannatyne quips that he’s “flushed ten years of his life down the toilet“.
High Horse, not Holy Horse
…it drives people to do things, innovate, create, be entrepreneurs and to change the world.
Richard says that making money is what drives people to innovate and create to a man that is driven to innovate and create. Not by money, but by a desire to save the environment. To save humanity. To help humanity progress. Even if his claim of 47% less water usage is exaggerated, he is the example that disproves the rule: not everyone is driven by a desire to make money.
More so, there is proof in front of him that the desire to make money stifles innovation and creativity. The water companies don’t want to buy the device. Is it because the device is bad? Because it doesn’t work? Because it isn’t innovative or creative?
No. It’s because it won’t make them money.
Despite this device’s potential to help humanity and the environment, the fact that it can’t make companies money is the reason no one wants to adopt this technology. Proof that the drive to make money doesn’t always lead to innovative and creative new ideas.
The proof that everything Doug Richard said is wrong is staring him right in the face, and yet he has to have his rant anyway. He tells him to get off his “holy horse”, a phrase he even manages to mangle. The term is ‘high horse’, and ironically, Richard is the one riding it.
If he had been like the other Dragons and just said “uninvestable, I’m out”, I would never have felt the need to write this article. But the way he ranted at Wilks just rubbed me the wrong way, especially when every sentence he uttered was contradicted by the man in front of him simply existing.
Aftermath
It seems that Wilks had some success with Interflush after his appearance on the Den. He even appeared a second time according to Examiner Live, and being more prepared he was offered £150,000 for 49% of the company by Duncan Bannatyne2. Clearly he had changed his mind about the money this device could generate. Wilks turned down the money, as he wanted to maintain control of his company.
Interflush was eventually dissolved in 2016 and the patent is not in force anymore. The reason isn’t clear, but it likely comes down to an unsustainable business model. It’s a niche product with a hard ceiling on sales. Once you reach that ceiling, no more profit can be generated.
The only real route to have such a device be successful would be to have it essentially required in all new toilet installations, which means changing legal standards and government contracts. Methods which won’t necessarily make money, especially if the device is proven not to be as effective as promised.
But this article isn’t really about Interflush. It’s about the mindset that profit must always come first. The belief that money drives progress, and anything that doesn’t make someone rich isn’t worth pursuing. That somehow that will enable innovation and creativity. David Wilks is a man with that creativity and innovative drive, and yet struggles to be successful because the system requires him to make money.
We don’t know how effective this device is. And since it can’t increase the bank balances of those who are already wealthy, we never will.
