Product Update

What Happened to Playbrush After Dragons’ Den?

Playbrush left the Den without a deal. Here is what happened next: how the pitch went, why the dragons passed, and where Playbrush is today.

Dragons' Den IndexUpdated 30 June 20266 min read

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Playbrush is an unusual Dragons' Den story because the founders turned down the money, not the other way round. Four Dragons offered the full £100,000 the team asked for. The founders said no anyway, because it would have cost them more equity than they were willing to give up.

The Short Answer

Playbrush is no longer an independent company. It was acquired by the Swiss oral care group Sunstar in September 2021, and the technology now lives on as part of Sunstar's product range rather than under its own name and ownership.

So the brand as it was pitched in the Den does not exist as a standalone business anymore, but the product itself did not vanish. It was absorbed into a much larger oral care company that continues to develop and sell it.

The Pitch

Playbrush pitched in series 15, episode 14, in the Tech & Software category. The idea was a smart attachment that clips onto a normal toothbrush and turns brushing into a mobile game, giving children a reason to actually brush for the recommended two minutes instead of racing through it.

The founders, Matthäus Ittner, Paul Varga, and Tolulope Ogunsina, asked for £100,000 for 5 percent of the business, a fairly punchy valuation for an early-stage hardware and app product.

Four Offers, No Deal

The pitch went well enough that all four Dragons offered the full £100,000. But every offer came with a demand for more equity than 5 percent, and the founders would not go above roughly 1 percent give. Rather than dilute further, they walked out with four live offers on the table and no deal signed.

That is a genuinely rare outcome on the show. Most founders who get multiple offers take one. Playbrush's team judged that keeping control of the company was worth more than the Dragons' money and network combined, at least at that valuation.

What Happened After

The gamble paid off in the sense that the founders kept building without giving up meaningful equity to the panel. Playbrush went on to raise funding from European investors instead, developed its product further, and grew into a recognised name in the children's oral care technology space.

That growth eventually led to the September 2021 acquisition by Sunstar, a much larger, established oral care group. Selling to a strategic buyer at that scale is generally a strong outcome for a hardware startup; it usually means the technology proved itself commercially rather than fizzling out.

Playbrush's model, a smart hardware attachment paired with a mobile app, also fit a broader trend in children's health products at the time, gamifying routine tasks to build habits early. That positioning likely made it an attractive acquisition target for an oral care company looking to add a technology and app layer to its existing product range rather than build one from scratch.

Where Things Stand Now

Playbrush the independent company is gone, folded into Sunstar's broader portfolio. But the smart toothbrush concept the founders refused to give up equity for in that Den episode is still being developed and sold, just under different ownership.

It is worth being precise about the distinction here: this is not a company that failed and shut its doors. It is a company that grew enough to be acquired outright, which is a different, generally more successful, ending than most Den no-deals get.

What the Founders' Bet Actually Proved

Walking away from four live offers is a genuinely risky move, and it does not always pay off; plenty of founders who hold out for better terms end up with nothing at all. Playbrush's team had the product, the traction, and enough conviction in their own valuation to gamble on finding better terms elsewhere, and the eventual Sunstar acquisition suggests that confidence was well placed.

It is a useful counterpoint to the more common Dragons' Den narrative, where a deal on the show is treated as the make-or-break moment. Here, refusing the deal on the night was arguably the better long-term decision for the founders' eventual payout.

The Bottom Line

Playbrush turned down four live offers totalling £100,000 because the equity terms did not work for the founders, then built the business independently until Sunstar acquired it in September 2021.

If you came here wondering whether the smart toothbrush survived, it did, just not as its own company anymore. The product lives on inside a much bigger oral care business today.

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See the full Playbrush deal breakdown and term sheet →