This was the meet-up that almost took place at Number 10 Downing Street. Now it has moved to Google Campus, and anyone is free to pitch. The results? Impressive; a queue of “wantrepreneurs” organised and chatty, an engaged and questioning audience with plenty of whoops and hollers. So, Better than Downing Street, and with more free beer (probably, although Dave Cameron looks like he knows his way round a pint), provided by sponsors Vedett, and Vita Coco for the abstainers.
Below are my amateurish attempts to cover each and every pitch, think live blogging on a 24 hour delay. I hope it proves useful and if nothing else it shows just how many great business ideas are being incubated under the auspices of Google Campus, Tech City, and characters like Daniel Korski, special advisor to the PM. Feel free to weigh in with your objections, corrections and opinions.
1. Name: Oswald
Company: Me, myself and I!
Pitch: Oswald is an accountant, introducer, man about town and influential on the London Open Coffee Morning circuit. A good guy to know.
Audience feedback: Unclear about the proposition, swiftly cleared up by Oswald: come to me with your problems and I’ll help you fix them!
2. Name: Johnny Challenger
Company: Style Compare
Pitch: Visit your favourite fashion stores online, tell Style Compare what you like, and when the price drops they will tell you
Audience feedback: discoveredStyle Compare work with Asos, Topshop, get 25,000 visitors each month and customer acquisition costs £1 per user. It’s free to use, they take a cut from the retailer
3. Name: Simon Farrell
Company: Equity Spark
Pitch: Equity Spark helps students find investment via a crowdfunding style platform. They are looking for backers
Audience feedback: Equity Spark are 6 months old, check out their elevator pitch
4. Name: Anton G
Company: Hitch (like the movie)
Pitch: Hitch is a dating app you can use to set your friends up with each other via Facebook
Audience feedback: What happens if it doesn’t work out? It’s on you buddy!
5. Name: Stefan van der Fluit
Company: Nuklius
Pitch: Nuklius facilitates the creation of start-ups, it’s for anyone who likes the taste and feel of entrepreneurship. Find co-founders, network and fulfil your dreams!
Audience feedback: How do you make money? The basic platform is freemium but the video content is paid for if you upgrade to pro version.
6. Name: missed
Company: Reality Game show?
Pitch: “I came to London last week with £100 in my pocket and my mission is to make £1 million before the year is out! Where are the hidden cameras, I know they are here”
Audience feedback: Enthusiastic, confused. Are you for real? Yes, apparently, endorsed later on by a mystery supporter
7. Name: Akil
Company: SWAGEASY
Pitch: Add an ecommerce site to your website in under 30 seconds, the Company was founded in San Francisco, it has 4 engineers and its expanding fast. Free service, think about monetising later.
Audience feedback: 30 seconds. Really? Yes as it turns out. It’s a plugin, essentially, but looked like a mighty good one. Impressive, plucky pitch
8. Name: missed
Company: Hideout
Pitch: Raise 1 million before making a sale? Check. Hideout rents warehouses and turns them into hostels, the right kind of hostels, that is, not the crack den-y ones. £30 per night, Peckham, Shoreditch and Islington mooted locations.
Audience feedback: what kind of people stay there? Hipster tourists, anyone who likes hostelling, probably not the super-rich.
9. Name: Marion
Company: Position Dial
Pitch: Where do you stand on issues you care about? Position Dial tailors content to your tastes with a focus on politics and political parties.
Audience feedback: Is this big-data? Yes. And its audience engagement too. And it will tell you which politicians agree with you. You have been warned!
10. Name: Warwick
Company: Scandinavia Stories
Pitch: Scandinavia Stories is a communication method. Warwick is its evangelist, working with companies to perfect business strategy development and problem solving techniques.
Audience feedback: Who are your clients? Working with several large organisations including Pearson, University of Westminster, Cass Business School
11. Name: Carl
Company: Audiowings
Pitch: Audiowings is a set of headphones that is location sensitive, selecting tunes that match your surroundings. Working with several headphone manufacturers. It’s Google Glass for your ears.
Audience feedback: Intrigued, but it’s just an app, right. Not when you have major headphone manufacturers on board, no. Excitement.
12. Name: Anthony
Company: Campus Paid(?)
Pitch: It’s Pinterest for jobs, including personalised recommendations, and 1,500 users, 20% from abroad.
Audience feedback: Lukewarm but promising. Been going since Feb, work with Campus London
13. Name: missed
Company: App as yet unnamed
Pitch: Using business intelligence to analyse Facebook data? A good start, an idea gaining traction but its early days for this pitcher.
Audience feedback: Confused but supportive. Only 1 user, the founder. Monetisation? Well, you could pay yourself?
14. Name: missed
Company: GiftaView
Pitch: Its charitable donations for those who can’t be arsed to run a marathon. Sound like you? Upload a video and ask for donations to reveal more. Charity.
Audience feedback: Do you take a cut? Yes, 5% of all donations, its standard practice.
15. Name: Milos
Company: Local Travel Guides
Pitch: custom guides help you with your travel needs. 10 guides already in Serbia, looking for more internationally.
Audience feedback: Hasn’t this been done before. Yes, but not like this. Tailored to suit your needs.
16. Name: Vishal
Company: Homeify
Pitch: Run educational or training courses from the comfort of your own home. Cookery, yoga, gardening, for example. “Connects inquisitive minds with inspiring teachers in the local community.
Audience feedback: Where do you find the teachers? Good question, working on that. (Market the platform, I guess?)
17. Name: Jan Skoyles
Company: The Real Asset Company
Pitch: A gold backed crypto currency. Bullion held in Geneva, London, Singapore. Platform and exchange, trade real assets. No financial license required. Buy bullion online.
Audience feedback: Intrigued, appreciative. How do we get more info? Visit the website
18. Name: Sam
Company: Openplayer
Pitch: Music player in its most basic form. Ipod shuffle, SD cards, probably an attractive proposition for those in the know.
Audience feedback: The initiated had questions: will be released on non-commercial open source platform. A good audio processor, could be worth £20-25 each.
19. Name: missed
Company: Tanktop TV
Pitch: Anyone who watches Netflix, NowTV and others can use this handy guide to plan their viewing and never miss the best shows. Personalised TV scheduling. 2 fulltime staff.
Audience feedback: monetisation? Tried affiliate networking but revenue stream too small, looking for more customers, more users, “who isn’t?” Quite.
20. Name: Sam
Company: News Junkie
Pitch: Sam is a self confessed news junkie, but he wants to read and watch the right kind, not what the media giants want us to see. So he is working with, um, Reuters, and more promisingly, Sheffield University.
Audience feedback: Supportive. Another Company that needs time to grow.
21. Name: Andy
Company: Agency Guys
Pitch: A full service marketing agency, they literally do all you’re marketing for you, connecting you with customers, running your campaigns. Your very own marketing department.
Audience feedback: What happens if you fail to generate leads / business? How do we bring you to account. We’ll talk about that if it happens, maybe it’s your business? Direct and punchy.
22. Name: Sam Fisher
Company: Book a drone
Pitch: Your own personalised Drone to do with as you please. For a short time. Comes with a free human pilot, based on the ground. Regulated by the CAA.
Audience feedback: Receptive. Everyone loves a good drone business. Plenty of opportunities and potential users.
23. Name: missed
Company: No Product
Pitch: Let’s form a start-up community on Reddit! Simple as that really, started 3 days ago, 150 already signed up. Not bad for starters!
Audience feedback: Send us the link! Reddit receives 100m views per month. We are all more powerful when we do things together etc etc!
24. Name: Mary Griffiths Clarke
Company: www.marygwen.com
Pitch: Where to start? Political lobbyist, filmmaker, parliamentary candidate, passionate about the sustainable economy, rights for rural communities too often overlooked by Westminster.
Audience feedback: Engaged, impressed. Lots to take in.
25. Name: missed
Company: Applys
Pitch: Like a UCAS form but easier, online. For Independent and Private Schools?
Audience feedback: Rumour about a last round valuation of £1 million
Apologies for missing names and doubtless many, many crucial details. If you can tell the story better yourself get in touch, please! Let’s track the progress of these companies together. So many talented people in one place.
Vishaal Virani
July 30, 2014Great article, I am impressed with how much of the detail you captured. Well done!