We’ve had some more great news this week when we found out that E-resistible has made it through to the finals of the National Varsity Pitch Competition run by NACUE – an organisation that supports entrepreneurship at UK universities. In total there were 42 semi-finalists split amongst 7 categories and one business has been selected from each category to provide 7 businesses who will compete in the Grand Final held in The British Library on 5th May.
The 1st prize is £10,000, access to a business mentor and free office space (yes we’ve got some in Tewkesbury but we could do with some space in London too!) The final also has some heavyweight judges in the form of Doug Richards from the 1st two series of Dragons Den, July Meyer from the online version of Dragons Den and Richard Tyler who is the enterprise editor for The Daily Telegraph.
Last monday I attended the semi-finals for our category which involved pitching E-resistible to a pannel of 6 judges for two minutes and taking their questions. Unfortunately both Stephen & Velin were out of the country so I was on my own meaning that the pressure was really on to get through! I don’t know how I would have explained it to them if we didn’t make it…
I am supremely confident in the business and having lived & breathed E-resistible for the last 2 years I was able to answer the judges’ probing questions very specifically and in great detail. I don’t expect that Doug Richards will be anywhere near as easy to impress but we are definitely going to give it a good go!
There are other benefits to the competition such as increased visibility and exposure on a national level for E-resistible. The audience will be made up of invited guests such as investors, public figures and national press so there is also potential that we will be seen by someone who is very keen to invest money into E-resistible. We haven’t actively sought investment capital to date because we haven’t needed it and we enjoy our large equity stakes in the company, however, we could do an awful lot if someone offered us a substantial sum of money (150k+).
Who knows where this road will lead. We really want to win on 5th May and I think we are in a very good position to be strong competitors for the 1st prize. Pitching to some business legends will be pretty intimidating but i’m sure we will take it in our stride and give it our best shot.
