A Bolton School old girl who won over the 'dragons' on the hit BBC show inspired the next generation in a special talk to pupils.

Charlotte Morley, became the first contestant to come away with double her investment request on Dragons' Den.

She was the opening speaker in the first of this year's Perspectives lectures, which focussed on what life is like as an entrepreneur.

The Cambridge graduate starting working in intelligence where she tackled threats to national security before setting up her own business 'to make the world better'.

She told how she founded thelittleloop while working as Head of Digital Product at Notonthehighstreet and how she left her role to work on her own business full-time.

Charlotte’s first tip to the audience was to define the impact you want to have – for her it was a chance to solve real world problems. Charlotte told how, in her job, she gets to do everything and, for her, this was a good thing as she has always needed variety and stimulation. Her success, she said, has led to her being able to meet Deborah Meaden and Stephen Bartlett every six months and has allowed her to visit Number 10 and to meet the Prime Minister.

Speakers also included Rob Dobson, and went on to start his own business, an electronics consultancy, Krish Patel who launched Tales to Inspire, a platform and social enterprise to share people’s stories online in order to inspire change and in February of this year, Krish launched StoryOak, after interviewing his grandma. StoryOak captures people's life stories on film which are passed onto their family members, so that no story goes forgotten.

Katherine Swift said that she felt compelled to move to the Third Sector when her mother was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in 2010. She vowed to do everything she could do to help her and started working with a breast cancer charity that funds world-class research. Spending time in the research unit, she told how she became fascinated with the potential that green tea, which is full of antioxidants, had to fight the disease. If her mum was going to drink green tea, it had to be the best, and it was then that she discovered matcha. They both started drinking matcha green tea and felt great; Katherine explained that she felt so passionate about matcha that five years after her mum’s diagnosis, she launched OMGTea, a specialist matcha green tea company. Almost 10 years on and they are now stocked in Holland & Barrett, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Ocado and many more stores.