Lindsay Nevins is an event organizer who is helping out at Techfluff.tv, she reports from the The Pitch 2009, held last Monday.
“I recently attended The Pitch 2009 final and conference on November 16, 2009. Without having any previous knowledge of the conference I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was basically a replica of the “Dragon’s Den” brought to a much smaller scale. I arrived just in time to participate in the ‘speed networking’ exercise, facilitated by Oli Barrett, the founder of Connected Capital and Make Your Mark with a Tenner. Barrett helped motivate interaction among the audience by first making sure that everyone was seated next to, or near, someone they had never met before and second, kept the communication limited by blowing a whistle every 5 minutes within a 20min period. I thoroughly agreed with Barrett’s views on the importance of networking, because you never know who is going to be beneficial to you in the future. However, given my experience with ‘speed networking’ I believe it is more focused on quantity and less so on the quality of the people you network with.
Immediately following ‘speed networking’ were the pitches, where 30 entrepreneurs competed in 5 cities for the chance to pitch their ideas in the hopes of winning a £50,000 prize. The 6 individual winners were Super Mouth from the South West, BEEcycle from the North, The Printed Bag Shop from Scotland, Get Set Schools from the Midlands, Cyclehoop from the South East and the wild card winner Lily Pins. Each participant had 3 minutes to deliver their pitch which was followed by 7 minutes of Q&A by the judges. All of the participants had their strong and weak moments, although it was clear who came the best prepared for this competition.
After the pitches were finished, the judges had 30 minutes to deliberate and returned back with their choice for the best 2009 Pitch, and the winner was Anthony Lau, Founder of Cyclehoop. Cyclehoop is a cost-effective and environmentally friendly new way to help ensure bike security and increase the number of available parking spaces. In my opinion, Lau was by far the best candidate; he delivered his pitch with confidence and had a strong knowledge of his product as well as the appropriate data to support its benefits to society.
I thoroughly enjoyed the conference, and I think The Pitch is a great way to give smaller businesses and entrepreneurs and chance market themselves and hopefully win £50,000 in the process.”
