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 in third place came Technojagiti, a social enterprise that offers expertise in developing socio-environmental solutions for Companies, Social Enterprises, Governments, Communities and Individuals in UK, Europe, USA and India.
The event ended with a networking reception where it was interesting to get to know the team members and what the winners plan on doing with the £1,000 (for first place) prize money!
Pictures and prize presentations can be found:
http://www.lse-entrepreneurs.org/?page_id=127
http://www.youtube.com/user/ecuhct?feature=mhw4#p/u/6/zGwcgxkBSSg
http://www.youtube.com/user/ecuhct?feature=mhw4#p/u/7/lntxap8OhJA
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Great blog Victoria, very insightful!
Looks really cool and sounds the quality was as could be expected from a top school as LSE:)
Excellent work guys. It’s great to see the hard work put in bearing fruit, and the up and coming talent driving through. These are very exciting times!
Keep it up! Jonnie
It sounds like a lot of hard work as well excitement for the pitching teams! Congratulations to the winners! Great job.
This was a great event. I was happy to have the opportunity to attend. Nice summary Victoria!
Looks like it was an awesome event. I saw Victoria and Nicole in the pictures on the Pitch It website
Looks great, well done
Really impressive! Fantastic way to give the bright minds of the future an opportunity to express their creativity and be heard by some of the leading players in Business. Victoria and Heidi very well done!
Sounds like a great event, and worthy winners!
Best name: BestGiraffe.
Very exciting competition - a wonderful forum for the bright ideas of the future!
Really great event! Thanks to Heidi and Victoria for doing a great job organizing Meltwater´s participation at the event.
Thanks for the comments everyone, Heidi did a great job organising this event. Watch this space as 2010 is going to be an exciting year for events like these
AWESOME EVENT. Was fabulous to have Jorn on the panel and meet the potential Richard Bransons of tomorrow! Watch this space for more events….