Pitch Your Idea 2009 - Photos at last!

The Pitch Your Idea business plan competition final was over a month ago now, on April 8th, but I've finally got photos from it to post here, to give everyone an idea of what the event was like.

Nine finalists pitched their business plans to a panel of six judges whose expertise covered finance, IP, biotechnology and entrepreneurship. Following their pitch, each finalist was grilled for about 15 minutes by the panel - an experience that was described as being nerve-wracking, but much more positive than Dragon's Den! After a long deliberation (that felt even longer to those of us waiting outside) the judges finally settled on a winner - Becky Stewart from Electronic Engineering for her "AudioBlitz" idea. Melissa George from the Physics department and Martin Morrell, also from Electronic Engineering, were awarded runner-up prizes.

Everybody really enjoyed the day, and the feedback from both the judges and the finalists was very positive. The judges were extremely impressed with standards of the ideas and pitches, and the finalists all said how much they appreciated not only the judges questions and advice, but also the confidence and communication skills they had developed through the competition.

Pitch your Idea will be running again next year, probably starting in January 2010, so watch this space if you are interested! A web area will be set up to publicise next year's event, and photos, videos and interviews from this year will be available on that site.