Two sisters who founded a recruitment business helping mothers back into work have won £87,000 investment on Dragons’ Den, after having just 12 hours to prepare before the show.
Amelia, 29, and Lydia Miller, 27, from London, sought a £75,000 investment for a 3 per cent stake in their business but got offers from all four of the dragons.
They eventually accepted £50,000 and the use of the penthouse in his office from Steven Bartlett in exchange for a 5 per cent stake, as well as £37,500 from Deborah Meaden for 3 per cent.
The sisters said they had 12 hours’ notice before filming the episode, which aired on Thursday evening, and worked on their pitch overnight in a hotel room. Their business, Ivee, is a recruitment platform connecting those returning to work after a career break with employers, as well as upskilling job applicants and creating a community.
They were inspired to start the business after seeing their mother’s difficulty returning to work.
Although it was only in the testing phase at the time of filming, Ivee is now a year’s old and valued at £6.5 million after signing clients including Red Bull, Deliveroo, TransPennine Express and OVO Energy.
The sisters pitched on Dragons’ Den, winning investment from Steven Bartlett and Deborah Meaden
The sisters said they had had an 80,000 per cent increase in website traffic in the 30 minutes after the episode aired. “It was such a whirlwind,” Lydia said, “We got a call from the BBC on a random Thursday — we had just got back from Glastonbury.
“We got on the next train, spent the night writing our pitch in a hotel room in Manchester, which was quite good because it meant that we didn’t have that build up of nerves — and the difficulty of deciding what to wear as well — that was all taken away from us.” She added: “The pitch went better than the outfit.”
After hours of negotiating the investment, the sisters bought some Prosecco on their return train journey to London. “We didn’t even have time to tell anyone, our partners or our parents, that we were even going to Manchester so it was like a tiny little bubble for 16 hours of adrenaline and no sleep,” Lydia said.
She said their mother “couldn’t be more proud” and had cried watching the episode with their friends and family.
“I played a video of Stephen Bartlett surprising everyone with a few words on the screen,” she said, “he gave a really, really nice shout out and our mum’s actually going to go into his office next week because he really wants to meet her.”
The average age of an Ivee user is 38 and the overwhelming majority are women, who are more likely to take career breaks for caregiving — something Amelia described as the “primary driver” of the gender pay gap in the UK.
• The struggle to get back into work after a career break
Since starting Ivee, however, the sisters have broadened their prospective user base to include anyone going through a career break or transition. They said they receive interest from military spouses, retired athletes and most notably, those made redundant as a result of AI.
“We’re seeing a lot of mass layoffs in certain industries that are more either admin-based or have a lot of repetitive tasks, so things like customer service, assistant-type roles, HR, and junior-level roles,” Amelia said.
“A woman is 80 per cent more likely to be in a role that is vulnerable to AI because they typically tend to be in departments like executive assistants or HR, for example. Women are also far less likely to actually use AI, which is also why at Ivee we’re so passionate about our reskilling and our upskilling hub.”
As well as causing redundancies, the sisters said AI use in recruitment, both by job applicants and employers reading applications, is biased against people taking career breaks, consequently disadvantaging women.
• Will a chatbot give me a job? I put AI recruitment to the test
Ivee also connects people facing rejection in the job market with WhatsApp groups and in-person events to build up jobseekers’ confidence.
“We’re humanising an industry that has been taken over by such faceless tech giants,” Lydia said, “Anyone that has had a career break, or doesn’t feel like they are currently crushing it, is not comfortable on LinkedIn.
“It’s turned into a social media for the employed, where people post about their promotions, it’s not the place that you want to be when you have been made redundant, when you have been out of work for a number of years.” She added: “It’s not you, it’s the 2025 job market.”