Last Tuesday evening the London School of Economics (LSE) Old Theatre, which has previously been host to Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and Amartya Sen, was buzzing with students eagerly awaiting the outcome of the LSE “Pitch It!” business plan competition they had been part of for the last 4 months. Twenty-six teams had entered their business ideas, but the final six teams were about to pitch their businesses to the panel of judges made up of Julie Meyer (BBC Dragons’ Den and Founder of Ariadne Capital Cash), Jorn Lyseggen (Founder and CEO of Meltwater Group), John Dixon (Head of Media, RBS Finance) and Cliff Prior (Chief Executive of UnLtd).

After all the pitches were completed and each team had answered questions on their executive summaries, the judges went off to make the difficult decisions on who the winners would be in the General Enterprise and Social Enterprise categories.

On return, the judges announced that the winner in the General Enterprise category was BestGiraffe, an online forum for the sale of original user-created advertisements, followed by Yoüny, an online LSE student-focused network for booking tutorials and in third place Pressure Trade, an innovative online and mobile gaming service provider aiming to improve people’s trading skills through an easy and enjoyable gaming solution.

In the Social Enterprise category the winners were Versus (who also won the audience vote), a for-profit social enterprise which aims to revolutionize the way we do shopping and the way we give to charity, Adia Beading, a socially conscious jewelry company came in second and…