Inaugural House Entrepreneur competition sees Queen's crowned the winner

Last week saw the culmination of our 2021 House Entrepreneur competition. Born during January’s lockdown, students in the First to Fifth Year were set the challenge of coming up with a business idea (as a desktop exercise), undertaking market research, establishing a brand identity and logo, coming up with a marketing strategy and costing out the financials with a view to making a profit. 

There were some excellent ideas across all five years with interim prizes distributed at each stage. Five students, Edward Haynes, Hannah Grigg and Joseph Ellis from the First Year and Jasmine Levell and Adam Nasir from the Fifth Year made it through to the final stage, when candidates had to pitch their ideas and business plans to the judges before facing a series of probing questions from the panel. 

The judging panel consisted of alumni Lara Mott (from the class of 2002), CEO and Founder of ImproveWell and the BMJ Entrepreneur in Residence, and Jeroen Sibia (class of 2006) who has started a number of businesses and initiatives as well as working at McKinsey and Barclays Capital. They were joined by the Head Master, Mr Lehec, KGS Head of Marketing, Mrs Natalie Man.

Each of the students had come up with very different ideas. Adam Nasir went first, introducing his Travl.io platform, a travel networking app for young people to make connections and seek advice about places to go and things to see. Next was the turn of Jasmine Levell who spoke passionately about her desire to bring the Rehema Project's ethical clothing brand to the UK market from Tanzania. Joseph Ellis followed, with Inside Track, an application that would warn cyclists of the impending danger of lorries turning left by sounding an audible alarm over headphones. Hannah Grigg shared her passion for books and her desire to encourage reading via her Bookworm & Co business and finally, Edward Haynes talked us through his idea to link patients and medical professionals through his online service, Medic at Hand. 

All the students impressed with their ideas and confidence and the manner in which they answered questions. The judges particularly noted the strength of Hannah's visual branding, the clean simplicity of Joseph's 'Safe. And Sound.' tagline and the appeal of Edward's plan to utilise bus shelter advertising. Jasmine was complimented for the thoroughness of her presentation and the judges were hugely impressed with her determination to bring her idea to fruition by actually following through and doing it. 

However, it was Adam who ultimately wowed the judges the most, with his slick presentation, impressive video advertisement and with an idea which they thought would have genuine traction as the travel industry looks to bounce back from the pandemic. Adam was therefore crowned the winner, becoming KGS's inaugural 'Entrepreneur of the Year' and was awarded the trophy. No one went away empty handed, however, with all five finalists getting a £50 voucher, a House Entrepreneur certificate and a copy of Kirsty Knight's book, First Time Entrepreneur. We look forward to finding out where our budding entrepreneurs will be in 10-15 years’ time!

Thanks go to Lara, Jeroen, Mr Lehec and Mrs Man for their time in judging the final, no easy task with such great ideas! Interested students should look out for the 2021-22 competition which will launch in the next academic year as we begin our search for the 2022 Entrepreneur of the Year!

By Mr AJ Beard, Assistant Head