On Tuesday 7 March, 5 teams of students took part in a Dragons’ Den (or Shark Tank) –style competition, where they had to persuade the team of judges that their business idea was worth investing in. Our teams approached the task of presenting a polished pitch with determination and creativity. The teams showed that they can do just as well as any other entrepreneurs, who face the same task on a daily basis. The task was extremely challenging given the expertise of our judges – Dhiraj Mukherjee (co-founder of Shazam), Cassandra Harris (founder of Venturespring), Christina Mackay (InEn) and Jon Reynolds (founder of Swiftkey, the company behind the Swipe technology), assisted by Mrs Redding, Head of Entrepreneurship.
We were all delighted to hear the stories of our judges, as each of them reflected upon their personal experience of developing their extremely successful companies and gave advice to us, students, about the future.
The event itself was organised by a group of Lower Sixth students, with support from Mrs Redding. The team did a brilliant job making sure that every aspect of the event was covered, down to the smallest of details!
Congratulations to Sophie Fujiwara (Year 10) on winning the Most Innovative prize, to Parth Devalia, Benjamin Parsons and Jackson Wen (Year 11) for Best Marketing Strategy, and to the overall winner of the competition – Bryan Shaw (Lower Sixth), who will travel to Microsoft Accelerator to delve further into the world of entrepreneurship.
Tim Zabarev
