Sixth Former Will Taylor is calling on the Shiplake community to vote for him and his business .wlroo in a national competition to win £10,000 investment for his freelance motion design business.
The ‘Side Hustle Initiative’ is a national competition for 14 to 18-year-olds who are either already running a side hustle or have a great business concept that they are eager to begin. The top 25 people in the competition will receive six months of one-on-one expert coaching to help them develop their ideas. The top five finalists will share a £10,000 investment fund to go toward developing their business.
Will is currently studying business, IT and media in the Sixth Form and it was his business studies teacher, Mrs Sally Bayley, who suggested Will entered the Side Hustle competition. He first started working on his motion design company .wlroo when he was 12. He produces digital promotion videos for businesses and people looking for personal branding, using a range of graphics software to make his videos stand out. He also completed his EPQ (Extended Project Qualification) by producing an introduction video for the College.
In his pitch on Side Hustle, Will said:
“I create animated promotional videos, introductory videos, lobby directory videos, etc. I make them in Adobe After Effects CC, which I have been teaching myself since I was 11-12 years old. My business helps to employ exciting video and animation into advertising campaigns of all scales. I don’t only sell my service, however. I sell physical merchandise products with my logo embroidered into the t-shirt, digital ‘graphics packs’ for educational and personal use, my previous project files, as well as run a support program teaching ‘underdog’ creatives the business of design via my Patreon page.
“I also stream my commissioned work on the platform Twitch, the largest live streaming site in the world – this helps my audience to understand the behind-the-scenes of my work and learn something new. I also own the largest motion design server listed on Disboard; a Discord server listing community. My community has over 1,100 members, and we’ve been lucky enough to be verified on the platform (Discord).”
Please show your support for Will by casting your vote here before 25 July (click on the red 'Vote' button and enter your email address).
The top 20 will have an opportunity to pitch their business idea in Dragons' Den style to the side hustle judges. An additional five entries will be selected as wildcards and have an opportunity to pitch their idea to the judges too.
