If I said you had just one minute to pitch your business, what would you say?
I suspect most people would recoil.
How on earth could you possibly do justice to the complexities of your product, brand, customers and team in just 60 seconds?
That’s certainly how I’d feel.
Yet that was the challenge accepted by 38 founders at the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses UK programme yesterday.
And the pitches were brilliant. Not just some or even most of them. All of them.
It’s astonishing what can be communicated in a single minute when people are forced to focus on what really matters.
We heard pitches that made us laugh, gasp and lean forward in genuine attention.
I was judging alongside Sir Richard Harpin, Kene Ejikeme and Laura van Alkemade from Goldman Sachs. Michael Hayman MBE presided, enthusiastically. Our job was to pick one winner.
Congratulations to Ghurinder Dhillon from Otto Cars. Great pitch.
A reminder that a minute of clarity is often far more persuasive than 20 minutes full of complexity.
