GoTire Inc.

Craig Howes and Heather Murphy operated GoTire, a mobile tire installation and repair service run out of a trailer in Red Deer, Alberta.

They came to the Den in Season 7, episode 12, around 2013, asking for $175,000 in return for 20%. That ask implied a valuation of $875,000 for the road-going service.

By one recap account, Kevin O'Leary and Bruce Croxon combined on a $218,750 investment for 25% equity, closing during the episode. The founders gave up a slightly bigger slice for a bigger cheque, though the math holds the company's implied value at about the same $875,000.

Here is a satisfying bit of math. The ask, $175,000 for 20%, and the deal, $218,750 for 25%, resolve to the same underlying valuation of about $875,000. The Dragons did not talk the price down; they wrote a bigger cheque for a proportionally bigger slice.

That symmetry is the interesting part. A panel that liked the business but doubted the price would have cut the cheque; one that wanted more of it would have held the cheque and raised the stake. Scaling both sides together is a vote of confidence in the valuation itself. Mobile tire service run from a trailer is a capital-heavy model where the extra forty-odd thousand buys another rig, so the bigger cheque was probably the whole point.