Product Update
Is Mycorrhizal Systems Still in Business? (2026 Update)
Is Mycorrhizal Systems from Dragons’ Den still around in 2026? The deal it made, the dragons who invested, and where to buy Mycorrhizal Systems today.
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Mycorrhizal Systems holds a genuinely unusual place in Dragons' Den history. It was one of the very first pitches on the very first series, back in 2005, an offer to buy land for a UK truffle plantation that struck several Dragons as too strange, too slow and too speculative to back. Two decades on, it is one of the clearest examples on the show of a founder proving the sceptics wrong entirely on his own terms.
The short answer
Mycorrhizal Systems is still in business, and by most accounts it is thriving, more than 20 years after its series 1 pitch. Founder Paul Thomas built the company into the operator of the largest network of truffle growing sites in the world, including more than 30 in the UK, and in 2015 his team harvested the first ever truffle successfully cultivated from British soil, a genuine first for UK horticulture.
The pitch
Mycorrhizal Systems appeared in series 1, episode 4, in the Green & CleanTech category. The founder asked for 75,000 pounds in exchange for 25 percent of the company, a pitch built around the idea of establishing truffle bearing woodland in the UK, a proposal that required patience most investors are not built for, truffle trees can take years to produce a usable crop.
Long horizon agricultural pitches are a genuinely hard sell in a format built around quick, confident numbers. Series 1 Dragons were, by most accounts of the episode, unconvinced by the science and the timeline, and the pitch was met with real scepticism in the room.
What happened with the investment
Our records show the pitch resulted in a deal, though the specific investor and final terms behind it are not fully documented in the public record for this early series 1 episode, an information gap that is common for the show's earliest years. Multiple retrospective accounts of the episode describe Simon Woodroffe making an offer on air, and separately describe Thomas ultimately not proceeding with Den investment after filming, choosing instead to fund and build the business independently.
Whatever the exact mechanics of the deal, what is well documented is what came after. Thomas kept building Mycorrhizal Systems regardless of how the cameras left it, and the company he runs today is unrecognisable in scale from the pitch that struggled to convince the room in 2005.
Two decades of building a genuinely new UK industry
The truffle cultivation Thomas pioneered did not exist as a commercially viable UK industry before his work. The 2015 harvest of the first UK grown truffle was a significant agricultural milestone, and the company has gone on to build out plantation sites and consultancy services across dozens of UK locations and internationally.
It is a rare case among the show's earliest pitches, a founder whose idea was met with genuine doubt on air, who nonetheless turned it into a durable, internationally recognised business over the following twenty years, regardless of how the on air investment ultimately resolved.
A cautionary tale about long horizon pitches
Mycorrhizal Systems is one of the better arguments against reading too much into how a pitch is received on air. A panel of investors making a snap judgement on camera is working with limited time and limited domain expertise, and an idea that requires years of patience before it produces a saleable crop is genuinely hard to evaluate in a ten minute pitch, however sound the underlying science.
Thomas's own persistence, continuing to build the business regardless of how the Den appearance resolved, is arguably the more instructive lesson than anything about the pitch itself. Two decades of steady work in an unglamorous, slow moving agricultural niche produced a category defining business that no amount of on air scepticism could have predicted.
Where things stand now
Mycorrhizal Systems pitched in series 1 for 75,000 pounds at 25 percent equity. Records of the exact investor and closing terms from that early episode are incomplete, but the outcome for the business itself is not in doubt, it is still operating today as the world's largest truffle plantation network, with the UK's first cultivated truffle to its name.
If you came here to check whether the truffle farm from series 1 made it, it did, more than most pitches from any series manage.
Where to buy Mycorrhizal Systems
Still selling as of 29 March 2026. Check today's price and availability.
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See the full Mycorrhizal Systems deal breakdown and term sheet →
