Product Update

Is Coin Metrics Still in Business? (2026 Update)

Is Coin Metrics from Dragons’ Den still around in 2026? The deal it made, the dragons who invested, and where to buy Coin Metrics today.

Dragons' Den IndexUpdated 3 April 20266 min read

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Coin Metrics pitched technology to monitor cash operations inside slot machines in series 3 of Dragons' Den, asking for 200,000 pounds for a 25 percent stake. It is one of the show's genuine early success stories in terms of the money made, but the original company itself no longer exists as an independent business.

The short answer

Not as an independent company, no. Coin Metrics was sold outright to a competitor, Brulines, in 2007, roughly a year after the Dragons' Den episode aired. The technology lives on inside Brulines' operations, but Coin Metrics as the entity that pitched on the show stopped existing on its own once that sale went through.

The pitch

Coin Metrics appeared in series 3, episode 8, in the Tech and Software category. Founders Richard Adams and Ian Daintith had built a wireless monitoring system called Site Guardian, which recorded every coin dropped into a fruit machine and transmitted the data back to operators in real time, flagging faults, machines left switched off, and possible fraud along the way. They asked for 200,000 pounds for 25 percent of the business.

By the time they pitched, the product already had commercial traction, having sold more than 4,000 units into around 100 premises across the UK, which is a stronger footing than most Den pitches walk in with. That kind of proven, revenue-generating traction going into the pitch is a significant part of why the eventual offer from the Dragons was as large as it was, since it removed much of the usual uncertainty around whether a market for the product actually existed.

The deal, and then the sale

Deborah Meaden and Theo Paphitis offered the full 200,000 pounds for the 25 percent stake, one of the biggest deals the show had struck up to that point. But Adams and Daintith ultimately turned it down. Other investors approached them after the episode aired with better terms, and they went a different direction than the on-air offer.

That different direction turned out to be an outright sale. In May 2007, Coin Metrics was bought by Brulines, a company already well known in the pub trade, for 685,000 pounds, most of it in cash, with the rest settled through a small allotment of shares. That is a strong outcome for the founders relative to the equity they would have given up to the Dragons, even without the television investment.

What that means for 'still in business'

This is a case where the honest answer depends on how you define the business. The Site Guardian technology Coin Metrics built continued operating inside Brulines' broader monitoring platform after the acquisition, so the product itself did not disappear. But Coin Metrics as a standalone company, the one that walked into the Den and pitched Deborah Meaden and Theo Paphitis, was absorbed into another company within a year of the broadcast and stopped trading under its own name.

If a directory or fact sheet elsewhere marks Coin Metrics as 'still selling', it is worth reading that as the technology surviving under new ownership rather than the original company still being open for business, because those are meaningfully different claims.

One of the show's better business outcomes

Whatever you make of the 'still in business' question, it is worth being clear that Coin Metrics is a genuine success story by most normal measures. Turning down a Dragons' Den offer of 200,000 pounds for 25 percent of the business, then selling the whole company for 685,000 pounds within roughly a year, values the business at close to three and a half times what the Dragons themselves were willing to pay for a quarter of it. That is a considerably better outcome for the founders than most of the on-air deals from this era of the show ever delivered.

It is a useful reminder that walking away from a Dragons' Den offer is not automatically a mistake, even when the offer looked generous on television. Founders who have other options, in this case competing interest from outside investors soon after the episode aired, are sometimes right to hold out.

Our honest verdict

Coin Metrics turned down its Dragons' Den deal, sold the company for 685,000 pounds within a year, and the underlying technology carried on inside its acquirer, Brulines. It is a financial win for the founders and a genuine survival story for the product, but not a case of the original company still trading independently today under its own name.

Where to buy Coin Metrics

Still selling as of 3 April 2026. Check today's price and availability.

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See the full Coin Metrics deal breakdown and term sheet →