The Dragons’ Den executives warned us that we were not changing our offer two days before filming.

• Married couple Simon and Charlene Mitchell-Hood have made The story of Dragons’ Den as the five dragons invested in their company for 1% share at £1 each. Their company Sooper Books aims to deliver the world’s best storybook streaming service, making reading exciting for children and effortless for parents.

• Their unusual offering, rhyming tone and short Dragons’ Den story made them stand out from the crowd, winning the hearts of the dragons. But even before the den, Princess Beatrice was an investor in Sooper Books.

We didn’t decide to make the £1 offer until two days before we went to film Dragons’ Den.

Before that, we had created the whole pitch and were discussing with the producers a completely different offer.

When we researched the show—and they tell you this, too—there’s a sweet spot between the amount of money people are asking for and the amount of money that gets deals done. For us, that amount of money wasn’t going to change our business. The other thing we looked at was how much equity we had to give up. We asked ourselves how could we put ourselves in a position where we could get a dragon for the least amount of equity possible.

At the last minute we had this idea and we had to pass it on to the head producer to ask if he was allowed to do it. We had to wait 24 hours to find out if we could change our offer or not.

The producer said, “This has never been done before and you do it at your own risk. We have absolutely no idea how they’re going to react.” The other thing that made us nervous was that our offer was so different. We knew before we went in that no one had ever invested at 1% before. No matter how much money we asked for, no one had ever done that at 1%.

If you look at all the other episodes where the dragons are like, “Oh, but that’s not enough to get us involved or excited about the company,” we thought they were going to say, “We’re just not interested.”

But it was everything we had hoped for and more, to be able to work with five incredible dragons: Touker Suleyman, Steven Bartlett, Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden and Sara Davies. We were shocked that Touker was the first to make the offer because he’s the one who says he won’t get out of bed for 1%.

It’s been seven months since we filmed Dragons’ Den, and it was a whirlwind night seeing it all again. Seeing us go into the den gave us chills. It was emotional for us, our first night away from our little girl. Of course, the film was cut dramatically, but we were in the den for over an hour, so you never really know how it’s going to be edited.

We knew one hundred percent that there would be tears on set. They were tears of joy, because seeing all those dragons on the wall talking about our offer was quite overwhelming. We were a little worried about how the editing would be done, because we didn’t want it to be a sob story. It’s not for us: we work very hard and we’re incredibly positive people.

Meeting the dragons was a life-changing experience that we will never forget.

When we were in the lobby and the green light came on, our hearts were racing. The adrenaline was pumping, but we couldn’t have been more prepared. We knew we had to show our product to the dragons and we thought the best way to immerse them in Sooper Books was to write them a story excerpt. It was really fun, involving all the dragons in a cave world in a story that was no more than a minute long, even though they didn’t show it in full. We came up with the idea because on our site we have Weirdlife, a nature mockumentary that plays on David Attenborough. Our narrator even took on the voice of David Attenborough.

All dragons are very good at showing poker faces, but Deborah was the first to crack. She gave us a little smile while we were pitching the rhymes. It definitely helped us get into that relaxed atmosphere.

It took us two days to write the rhyme pitch, but it took us a lot longer to learn them. There’s a little more pressure when you have rhymes. Everything is created to be literally syllable by syllable. We had to do it brilliantly to make it flow – even if we missed a beat, it wouldn’t work. And when we had to change the offer, we had to change the rhyme too! It was also a lot longer, but we had to cut it down for TV to fit it all into the slot we had.

We practiced it all the time in front of anyone who would listen. Our daughter, who is three, knew the text to the letter. At the end, she would point out if we made a mistake – it was hilarious!

We spent five hours in the studio and you would think that would make the pressure rise, but it relaxed us. Being in that environment was calming and we worked with an incredible runner who could probably also rhyme because he let us train with him.

The future is exciting – and having five dragons with us on this journey is incredible. Touker has already put us in touch with different manufacturers. We can’t tell you too much about what we have planned, but it’s very exciting. Steven’s team is on social media, which is a gap for us at the moment. Also, Peter and Deborah are veterans of the series. The connections that all the dragons have are just phenomenal.

Princess Beatrice has been an investor from the beginning. We couldn’t believe that a member of the Royal Family was investing in our company. So far, we’ve had to turn money down because we had too many investors. It just doesn’t seem realistic.

Simon and Charlene Mitchell-Hood told their story to Lily Waddell

Dragons’ Den airs Thursday nights on BBC One.

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