The Pitch

The Pitch 2023: Helping Britain’s brightest startups get investment ready

The Pitch is one of the UK’s largest startup pitching competitions, helping founders perfect their pitch and raise investment. Since its inception in 2008, The Pitch has evolved into a complete programme of support – helping entrepreneurs raise tens of millions in investment along the way.

With recent winners including plastic free shampoo brand Rowdy Kind and AI-powered lending platform Goodloans, The Pitch brings together exciting startups from across the UK. 

“Being part of The Pitch was more than just a challenge, it allowed us to get clearer on our proposition to investors – 90 seconds isn’t very long after all! – and gave us a huge amount of confidence about our business.

“We’re so grateful for the experience, and the mentoring we’ve had since the event has been invaluable,” said Kate Tilbury, co-founder of Rowdy Kind and winner of The Pitch 2022.

What’s in the pipeline for The 2023 programme?

Next year, we’re going to be building on our tried and tested programme, which is broken down into four levels: 

The six regional finals are held in Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and London. The Pitch Final takes place in London, and we always secure an exciting venue and renowned judges for this event.

This year the final took place at Google’s office, with judges including well-known entrepreneurs like Pensionbee CEO Romina Savova, ex-Graze CEO Anthony Fletcher and GoHenry COO Louise Hill

Partners of The Pitch also get involved, with Sage’s Andreas Georgiou and Crowdcube’s Darren Westlake joining the judging panel for the final.

The live event was sold out, with 100 people attending in-person and over 650 people streaming it online.

How The Pitch supports startup founders

Running for 15 years, The Pitch is well accustomed with the difficulties faced by startup founders. We continue to develop the programme and the content we deliver so that it’s as helpful as possible to our community – whether it be videos, webinars or articles.

Our network of investors, advisors and successful founders are also incredibly insightful to the startup founders who take part. They play a central role throughout the programme, from judging the competitions to sharing their expertise in interviews.

“The contacts I’ve made have helped me communicate better with investors. One of The Pitch judges has come on board as an adviser too,” said Zak Nason-Giwa, co-founder of Goodloans and winner of The Pitch 2021.

Find out more about our previous finalists and judges on The Pitch Alumni page.

Want to be part of The Pitch 2023? 

If you’re interested in joining us, sign up to our newsletter to find out when applications go live next year.

You can also find out more about the programme by downloading The Pitch 2023 overview deck here.

Siân Avent

Siân Avent is the Content and Marketing Assistant at Inkwell, the company behind The Pitch.

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