Year 12 Business students entered the Dragons’ Den last week to pitch their ideas to three staff members, asking them to invest their virtual cash, expertise and time in their initiatives. The budding entrepreneurs had been given the brief to come up with an e-business (website or app) project and the six start-up companies all impressed the dragons with their ideas to solve everyday issues. The dragons were the School Chaplain, Rev Briggs, Director of External Relations, Mrs Green, and Head of Business Studies, Mr Olhausen.
First up was Dan Henson, Taj Angell and Henry Doyle to promote their company ‘Petabouts’, which provides GPS tracking technology integrated into dog collars so that owners can locate their pet if they get lost but also offers additional features such as measuring the dog’s running speed. Whilst the dragons liked the concept and eco-friendly packaging, unfortunately they felt the usability and battery life of the collars would cause problems and they hadn’t considered the potential for growth and market diversification.
Next was Freddie Shorten and Hannah Parsons with their ‘Greetii’ business model, promoting their app for users to electronically transfer business cards to others in a single tap. The premium subscription would offer the option to share other useful data such as links to websites and promotional materials including documents and marketing videos. The dragons gave Freddie and Hannah the accolade of ‘best presentation’ which was thorough and delivered extremely well, with the pupils ready to provide convincing answers to the dragons’ questions.
The third company was ‘Just Jewellery’, presented by a group of three students including Phoebe Kay and Fin Worthington. Offering the sale of fashionable rings and necklaces for both men and women, the jewellery is for much more than just looking good and includes a hidden button that can be activated to signal the wearer's location and alert their emergency contacts. The dragons awarded this group the winning concept, based on them providing a solution to what has unfortunately become a current topic regarding the increased risk of drinks spiking and other dangers on a night out. They also identified the potential for growth to different target audiences and provided answers to the dragons’ questions on how the tech jewellery worked with the app.
The company 'e-Delivery' was promoted by Emma O’Shea and Alex Subramanian and was based on the already popular delivery apps like Deliveroo and UberEats but differentiating themselves by only partnering with restaurants that promote good-quality food, fair trade and include vegan/vegetarian categories, as well as promising better customer service, offsetting carbon footprints and meeting other high standards. The dragons appreciated the premise although wondered how easy it would be to be successful in an already crowded market, when also relying on the third-party retailers to keep the high standards being promoted.
Max Hepburn presented his group’s project alone due to absence and did a brilliant job at delivering the concept of ‘Your Party Planners’, a one-stop app for ordering all your party needs, from venue to DJ and other equipment hire. The dragons loved the idea of this seemingly simple concept although suggested starting in a particular city or county before broadening to the whole of the UK due to the complexity of the number of third-party companies involved.
The final pitch was from Lewis O'Donoghue and Liam Morgan, promoting ‘Clean Slate’ which gives the user an easy way to manage subscriptions and their digital footprint from the app after entering their email address, with just one swipe to keep or delete. The dragons welcomed the idea but questioned why there was no other concept like it, scrutinising the pupils on the role of GDPR and how Clean Slate would know the user’s email address was associated with all the different email mailing lists and accounts.
Mr Olhausen comments: “My congratulations and thanks to all the students for engaging so positively with the process and for producing such a wide range of interesting and innovative ideas. I look forward to seeing more cracking ideas when other Year 12 business students step into the Dragons' Den during the coming weeks and months."
