The pitch
What walked into the Den
SmartyPantz ran live escape rooms out of Vancouver, the kind where a locked group races a clock to solve their way out.
Dan Civiero and Chris Ricard pitched it in season 10 with a big number: $500,000 for just 10 percent, which set an implied value of $5 million on a company that was still young.
After the show
What happened next
The Den's verdict was never made public by CBC, and while trade coverage described a tense pitch over the founders' financials, nobody stated a clear deal or rejection, so we hold the line and call it unrecorded.
The trail since then points downhill. As of our July 2026 check the Vancouver location's Yelp listing was marked closed and the smartypantz.ca domain refused connection, so the escape rooms appear to have wound down.
Our read
The Hub verdict
A $500,000 ask for only 10 percent is an aggressive $5 million valuation for an escape-room chain, and trade reporting from the time paints a pitch that struggled to satisfy the Dragons on financials. That coverage stops short of a stated outcome, so we do not infer one. What has changed is the ground truth: a closed location listing and a dead domain now point to a wound-down business, which we record as our best current read rather than a permanent verdict on a format that can always relaunch.
Aggressive valuation, pitch went poorly, business now closed
Worth knowing: We record the business as closed on the signals available, but an escape-room brand can resurface under new hands, so treat the status as current best evidence, not a permanent verdict.
