Lane Merrifield: The Club Penguin Co-Founder
Lane Merrifield
Lane Merrifield co-founded Club Penguin, an online world for children, launched in 2005 out of Kelowna, British Columbia.
It grew fast on word of mouth among children and on a subscription model that kept advertising out, and Disney bought it in 2007 in a deal reported at around 350 million US dollars.
After Disney
Merrifield stayed on to run the property inside Disney for several years, then co-founded FreshGrade, an education technology company building tools for teachers to track and share student progress.
Both businesses sat in the same awkward place: consumer software with a duty of care to children and to schools, a constraint most founders never have to design around.
Joining the Den
He joined Dragons' Den in 2018, part of the intake that refreshed the Canadian panel in the show's later seasons.
His experience is in subscription products and in software sold into institutions, so retention rather than sign ups is the number his kind of business lives on.
Products Lane Merrifield backed in the Den
Vision Spatial Technologies
a computer-vision safety system for ski hills
Think Dirty
an app that reveals toxic ingredients in beauty products
Affichi Inc.
app that turns photos into printable peel-and-stick wall posters
Burgundy Oak
furniture and decor handcrafted from wine and whiskey barrels
VSSL
waterproof aluminum cylinder packed with survival supplies and an LED flashlight