Day 2 at EnvironmentYES!

Well today has been intense! After an educational taxi ride, where we were lectured on why the government is failing society today, we arrived at the conference centre. With 15mins to spare before we started, Emily and Gina managed to sweet talk the café manager to give us some biscuits having missed out on breakfast. We were all very grateful of these as from 9.30am till 1pm we were put through five packed lectures on aspects of finance, marketing, patenting and business plans. If you were following our tweets you’ll see that some of these were far more interesting than others!

Following lunch refreshed, refuelled and ready to go we headed to our individual conference rooms to begin outlining our business plan. Throughout the afternoon we were visited by four experts to help us develop our ideas. As the blog detailed yesterday we had been playing around with three concepts, and having slept on them we were all equally enthused by the energy transfer idea (Sorry Mark and Steve!), and had begun to explore this further doodling logos and the like throughout the morning.

The input from the experts has been invaluable this afternoon and as things drew to a close at 5.30pm we were reminded that at 6.30pm we had to give a 60sec elevator pitch to the rest of the groups. An elevator pitch is a hypothetical scenario where you are in a lift with an investor, and so have 60sec to concisely communicate your idea. Whilst sitting in the room waiting to hear the other groups speak we suddenly recalled that this pitch was also a competition, with a prize for the winning team! The tension increased!

Below is the transcript of our pitch that Gina delivered, hopefully you should understand our business idea from this, although please remember the technology is entirely our imagination, it is our business understanding that is being tested here!

As we are continually reminded energy resources are depleting, yet there is an untapped resource that continues to grow year on year, week by week and day by day… PEOPLE.
My name’s Gina and I am from ‘People Inspired Power’ or ‘PIP’. We have developed a new product that harnesses the power of footsteps. At its simplest the PIP STRIP is a pressure pad mat that converts kinetic energy into electricity.
Imagine a tube station where 10s of 1000s of commuters pass through ticket barriers everyday. Installing a PIP STRIP into this forced thoroughfare would generate enough electricity to not only power the station but to give electricity back to the grid as well.
PIP is safe, green, simple and cost effective.
Money may make the world go round but with PIP footsteps will drive it.

After all the groups had presented we had to vote for what we felt was the best pitch, although we were banned from voting for ourselves! HOWEVER, we managed to walk away with over 50% of the votes and an unquestionable win! Our winnings consisted of ‘The growing business handbook’ and a choice between book tokens or bubbly… naturally we took the wine. We have received a lot of praise from experts and teams alike, but have no fear this has not gone to our heads as we settle down to continue working and building on our early success.

With a late night ahead, and an early start tomorrow we’ll leave you now and look forward to hearing your feedback soon!

Gina, Anna, Emily and Laura