The Pitch is an annual competition designed to support people launching, running and growing their small businesses. It includes online content, free boot camps and a final pitching event.
This guide aims to help you through the application process, which starts here.
This page deals specifically with the filling out the application form, for general questions about the event like What do we win? see our general FAQ page.
Anyone can fill in the application form, but we ask that the business’ founder attends the events.
Stage one of The Pitch application
This stage takes an average of 10 minutes to complete.
Our judges look at your social accounts to help judge the level of traction you’ve achieved and the strength of your brand. However, we understand that you might not be focusing on these channels and will take this into account. It’s not mandatory to include details of your business’ social media accounts.
Asking you to describe your business in a tweet helps us get a succinct explanation of what you do. It’s the kind of statement you might tell your granny or use to explain what you do at a loud party. It should be accessible to someone who knows absolutely nothing about your sector. This is a required field.
Turnover is important because it demonstrates what stage your business is at and gives us an indication of how long its been running. It’s impressive when companies have made lots of sales, but The Pitch aims to celebrate what founders have achieved. You don’t have to be a big company to win. We welcome entries up to around £1m in turnover. We do not share this data publically.
The weighting we give the number of people that work at your company is used in a similar way to turnover. Please don’t worry if you’re a solo founder!
Is it okay for a small number of The Pitch’s expert partners to email you? The Pitch is free to take part and we are able to keep the lights on because of the amazing support of our sponsors. Part of the value they get from sponsoring is being able to contact you directly. These messages will be tailored to you and will be really helpful for your business. We would really appreciate it if you could say yes to this question.
At the end of this section, we’ll ask you to Save and continue, just like any great video game. If you want to update your answers you can scroll up. If you’ve already hit Save and continue you’ll have to start from the beginning again by clicking on the link in the email we sent you.
Stage two of The Pitch application
We save the information at this point. We’ve set it up to seamlessly move you on to the second stage, so hopefully you’ll barely notice. If you need to get back to here there’s a link in the first email we sent (the subject line is The Pitch 2018: Open this to start your application). Email Applications@ThePitch.uk if you’ve lost this link.
We ask for your elevator pitch to help us judge how great your business is. There are a ton of examples from last year’s finalists here. A could of things to think about:
- Clearly define the problem your business aims to solve and how it does it
- Any details about why this problem is personal to you
- Your major achievements and how this compares to the resources you have
- Demonstrate traction through awards, impressive clients etc.
- Be as personal as you want – the more your brand comes across the better
There’s a 150-word limit and the form will stop you typing at that point.
Tell us more about your product or service, market and team do pretty much what they say on the tin; this is your opportunity to provide more details on these areas of your business. We’re also looking at running additional awards based on these categories. They have 50 words for each. Awards, press coverage, customer sales, star ratings etc. are useful ways of demonstrating traction and proving achievements.
Knowing your sector helps us talk to our partners about the type of businesses that enter The Pitch and tailor our content to you. You don’t have to fill this one out, but if you do you’re only allowed to select one.
What’s your role? Helps us look up on LinkedIn etc. when we’re judging applications and to understand your perspective. Anyone can fill in this form, but our events are designed for founders, so we ask that they attend the Boot Camp and Final if the business makes it that far.
Finding out what you want to learn about helps us tailor your experience and improve our events – it’s really helpful, but not essential for you to answer.
Up to this point, you can go back and change your answers for Stage two, after you hit submit they’ll be confirmed.
Finally, you just need to hit Submit my application. At that point, you’ll be re-directed to a thank you screen.
That’s all folks! If you want more information about the competition and what we’re about please see the FAQ section of our site. If you have any other questions about the application process, think there’s something we could improve or have any comments please email Applications@ThePitch.uk.
