Member Article

Yorkshire entrepreneur who rejected Dragons’ Den set for Christmas success

A Yorkshire entrepreneur who rejected the chance to work with Duncan Bannatyne has reason to feel vindicated, as his app is set to be top of the Christmas charts.

Dean Tempest, 26, of Wetherby, is the creative brain behind trivia quiz game LINKEE!, which first hit the headlines when they rejected Bannatyne’s £50,000 offer for a 40% share on BBC 2’s Dragons’ Den.

An app version of the game has just been released, and is tipped by top game distributors for a number one spot in the Christmas app charts.

The game, and counterpart app, has been funded by the LINKEE! team’s savings and by family members.

The app has been developed by Ed Moyse, a 24-year-old tech entrepreneur who was watching BBC Two the night Linkee rejected Bannatyne’s offer on Dragons’ Den.

He said: “I thought the Dragons were crazy not to invest in Linkee. I leapt at the opportunity to collaborate with Dean, Tris, and Ben, to show the Dragons how wrong they were.”

The game, launched in September 2012, has gone on to become one of the fastest growing games in the UK and is stocked by all major toy retailers.

The Linkee app for iOS and Android is designed to put general knowledge and lateral thinking to the test.

Linkee, who operate proceedings from London, aims to be the world’s first crowd-sourced trivia app. The initial release contains 240 levels, and there is the option for people to submit their own questions, which will be added to the app in the next update.

Dean said: “A key element of Linkee is that we invite people to become part of our online community and help write questions. People from all over the world have already been participating, and we think Linkee is a better game as a result.”

The apps can be downloaded here for iOS and here for Android.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Graham Vincent .