Jordan Daykin (born 6 July 1995), is a British businessman and entrepreneur. He is best known for his 2014 appearance on the

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...

business programme ''

Dragons' Den ''Dragons' Den'' is a reality television program format in which entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to a panel of venture capitalists in the hope of securing investment finance from them. The program originated in 2001 in Japan, where it is k ...

'', where he became the youngest and most successful entrepreneur to win investment when he secured £80,000 from

Deborah Meaden Deborah Sonia Meaden (born 11 February 1959) is a British businesswoman and TV personality who ran a multimillion-pound family holiday business, before completing a management buyout. She is best known for her appearances as a 'Dragon' on the B ...

for his plasterboard fixing invention. He was called "One of Britain's Leading Young Entrepreneurs" on

City A.M. ''City A.M.'' is a freesheet, free business-focused newspaper distributed in and around London, England, with an accompanying website. Its certified distribution was 85,738 copies a day in February 2020, according to statistics compiled by the A ...

's list of 100 Most Powerful Entrepreneurs in the UK in March 2016.

Early life

Daykin was born in

Trowbridge Trowbridge ( ) is the county town of Wiltshire, England, on the River Biss in the west of the county. It is near the border with Somerset and lies southeast of Bath, 31 miles (49 km) southwest of Swindon and 20 miles (32 km) southe ...

, Wiltshire, where he attended

The John of Gaunt School The John of Gaunt School is a Mixed-sex education, mixed secondary school and sixth form located in Trowbridge in the English county of Wiltshire. The school is named after John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, as the school is built upon land ...

. His parents split up when he was nine; Daykin lived with his father until he was 13, when he moved to his grandparents' bungalow because his father went to Sierra Leone for work. At the age of 13, he left school to be privately home-tutored.

Early businesses

Whilst still in school at the age of 12, Daykin founded his first business, RS2Services, which sold game accounts and virtual currency to fans of fantasy role-playing game

Runescape ''RuneScape'' is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by Jagex, released in January 2001. ''RuneScape'' was originally a browser game built with the Java programming language; it was large ...

. A year later he started his second business, a nationwide tutoring agency called Tutor Magnet.

GripIt Fixings

In 2008, shortly after Daykin moved into his grandparents' home, he and his grandfather Stanley Daykin set about converting the garage into a bedroom for him. Daykin wanted both a blackout blind and a curtain rail to ensure no light could break into the room. After Daykin and his grandfather broke several fixings and drill bits attempting to hang the curtain rail, he went to the local DIY store to find a better solution, but could not find anything suitable. That afternoon they both went to the shed, and created the GripIt invention. The fixing was soon successful in mounting a television on the wall, and Daykin spotted a gap in the market. Four years later a patent was granted for GripIt and the invention was taken to market. In 2014, Daykin appeared on ''Dragons' Den'' and secured an £80,000 investment for 25% of his company from Deborah Meaden. In February 2016, Daykin's net worth was estimated to be £10 million. In July 2019 Daykin resigned as a director of UK Building Products Limited and left the company. In November 2019 the company successfully filed for a voluntary insolvency. GripIt has since secured a license deal with Charles Bentley a global distributor based in Loughborough.

Television and reception

After Daykin's first appearance on the

business programme ''

'' in August 2014, he appeared on ITV's ''This Morning'' television programme. On 28 February 2016, he appeared on the BBC Two programme ''Pitches to Riches'' which looked at ''Dragons' Den'''s biggest success stories.

References

External links

GripIt Fixings

Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Daykin, Jordan Living people 1995 births English businesspeople People from Wiltshire People from Trowbridge