Louise Truman brings Plotpackers to Deborah Meaden as the final business in Episode 8 of Series 23 of Dragons’ Den. The London-based founder is pitching after the summer break, with the panel shaped by the first Series 23 line-up where Female Dragons outnumber the males.
Plotpackers is already a £2 million business, built around group trips and more than 25 destinations. Truman launched it in 2023, when she was 23, after a solo backpacking trip in which she says she was sexually assaulted at 21.
Peter Jones and Steven Bartlett
The episode places Truman before Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden and Steven Bartlett, with Susie Ma and Jenna Meek returning as guest judges. That panel mix matters because it changes the pitch-room balance from the regular format and gives Plotpackers a wider spread of decision-makers than a standard night in the Den.
Truman has described the company as moving from hostel travel into a London office with a team, and she has also said the business is now building proprietary technology to support growth. In practical terms, that points to a travel model that is no longer just selling trips; it is trying to scale bookings, destinations and operations through a system rather than one-off manual planning.
Louise Truman and Plotpackers
“I launched Plotpackers while backpacking out of hostels. Now I run the business from a London office with a team. That transition has been a baptism of fire, and I’ve made plenty of mistakes I’ve had to learn from fast,” Truman said. She added that the numbers are not her main motivation: “Even now, going on Dragons’ Den, scaling the business intentionally, and building proprietary technology to support that growth, I still can’t say I’m particularly excited about the numbers.”
She has tied that growth to purpose as well as revenue, saying: “It’s the people. It’s the purpose. It’s the drive to make things a little bit safer for women. Which is really the whole thing in a sentence: what happens when a raging feminist launches a business?”
Series 23 after the break
The episode also lands in a notable Series 23 context: Touker Suleyman said earlier this year that he would be leaving the show after more than a decade in the Den, while Female Dragons outnumbered the males for the first time in the series. That leaves Plotpackers pitching into a panel that looks different from the one viewers have been used to.
Louise Truman’s pitch is the business story; the open question is commercial, not emotional. Whether the Dragons make an offer or take a stake in Plotpackers is the detail that will decide how far this debut in the Den goes.
