Techpitch 4.5

On the 25th May 2011 2Pears held a pitching competition at Pinsent Mason LLP (located between Old St and Liverpool St).

The judging panel was chaired by Danvers Baillieu (who happens to work for Pinsent Mason) but is maybe more famous for the illustrious Bootlaw series of workshops that he organises.

Other members of the judging panel were Eric van der Kleij CEO Tech City Investment Organisation, Glenn Shoosmith CEO BookingBug, Megumi Ikeda Comcast Interactive Capital, Amine Laouedj goetzpartners Corporate Finance, Zuzanna Pasierbinska-Wilson Huddle and Silicon Stilettos and Grace Yusuf or Kyubid.com. Some of the panel might have been slightly worse for wear having just returned from the eG8 conference (or should that be party) in Paris.

There were 9 pitches from start-ups: -

Gabriel Ortiz presented Clickslide - a platform allowing both developers and end-users to rapidly produce websites or mobile applications.

Sue Green with Dancetothis - aiming to be the central resource for dance in the UK i.e. linking how to videos, local events etc. Crowded market.

Tom Harrow with Findababysitter.com - pretty much the name says it all.

Ian Pickard with Gigaboxx - a system allowing artists and record companies to directly sell to the fans at a gig or event. Can produce a mobile app (music store) which is customised to the artist.

Dupsy Abiola with Intern Avenue - a site that is trying to get employees to pay interns.

Anil Stockner with Marketinvoice Ltd - A trading (auction) platform for companies to trade their invoices and get paid immediately (so the bidder will offer a price for the invoice and their fee).

Josh Liu with Minutebox - Minutebox is a platform allowing people with skills to sell them to other people using Red5 as a media server. The user sets their price and what skills they have and other users can buy their expertise on a per minute basis.

Matthew Scherba with Plancentric - a new approach to project planning (well enterprise resource planning or ERP).

Simon Phillips with Tools of Directing Ltd - a way for content creators to add meta data to video in the production process.

In terms of presentation Josh Liu's was by far the most succinct as he presented in time and got the all his points across and everyone understood what Minutebox did.

Dupsy Abiola's also stood out as she obviously understood the intern problem and was trying to address things in a positive way.

Anil Stocker's Marketinvoice has the potential to be very large, one to watch.

Some of the other ones were flakey (as in presentation or the business itself), but that's to be expected at a random pitching event.

All in all a great event and the Pinsent Masons auditorium is actually a great space to hold these kinds of events as the speakers can be heard and the presentations seen on the two screen set-up.

There are some pics of the event on Facebook