The pitch
What walked into the Den
Amanda Nguyen, a McMaster graduate from Toronto, built Boardball into a backyard game that blends volleyball with a bounce board.
She stepped into Dragons' Den Canada in Season 19, episode 3, which aired in 2024, asking for $50,000 in return for 5%. That modest ask implied a valuation right around $1,000,000.
After the show
What happened next
Two Dragons made a play, and Nguyen went with actor and investor Simu Liu, who put in $100,000, according to a March 2026 Forbes feature.
What happened next outshines the handshake: after growing to roughly $1.5 million in annual revenue with no employees, Boardball was bought by backyard-games company Vivere. The original web address now forwards straight to Vivere's storefront, where the Boardball Set sells for $199.99 USD with a working cart.
Our read
The Hub verdict
As Den asks go, this is almost restrained: $50,000 for 5%, a clean $1,000,000 valuation. The headline is not the equity math but what a $100,000 cheque from Simu Liu did next.
The real lesson sits in the aftermath. A backyard game reaching roughly $1.5 million in revenue with no employees, then getting acquired outright, is a rare full-arc outcome for this show. The valuation on air looks almost conservative against where the brand landed. That is the number worth sitting with.
A modest ask that turned into one of the show's cleaner exits.
Worth knowing: This is an acquisition, not a shutdown; the brand lives on under a new owner, and the numbers above come from Forbes and the live storefront.
