How I Secured £1,000 With a 90 Second Elevator Pitch
Key Lessons From UCL´s Explore Your Entrepreneurial Idea Program
This week on Money Mondays, I’m stepping away from book summaries to share something a little different—and very exciting! Over the past six weeks, I participated in UCL Innovation & Enterprise ’s Explore Your Entrepreneurial Idea program where Kaitlin Fritz led the sessions and taught us all about entrepreneurship 101. It was an incredibly insightful process where I learned essential steps for turning ideas into viable businesses. The best part? I pitched my idea in their competition and secured funding to move forward with my business! While I can’t share too much about my idea just yet (stay tuned!), I wanted to highlight my key takeaways and biggest learnings from this program:
📚 Key Takeaway #1: Your Business Should Solve a Problem
At its core, a successful business solves a problem. These can be people problems, planet problems, or purpose problems. Identifying a meaningful issue is the foundation of creating a product or service that resonates with your audience. Start by asking yourself: What pain point am I addressing? When developing your ideas, ask yourself what problems come up in your life and do you have ideas that could help address them.
📚 Key Takeaway #2: Develop a Strong Value Proposition
Once you’ve identified the problem, it’s crucial to understand how your solution helps. A strong value proposition articulates what sets your idea apart and how it benefits your target audience. To do this, your idea needs to stand out. Conducting a competition analysis helps you discover your unique selling point and differentiate yourself in the market. This also helps answer the crucial question: Is there a market in the gap I’ve identified?
📚 Key Takeaway #3: Create Your Customer Through Personas
Understanding your audience is key. During the program, I learned to create customer personas that identify their pain points, desires, and challenges. Tools like empathy maps are game changers for stepping into the customer’s shoes and crafting solutions that truly meet their needs. Ask questions like: What does my ideal customer want? What would make their life easier?
📚 Key Takeaway #4: Test, Test, Test
As entrepreneurs, we’re often biased toward our own ideas. Testing your concept with others helps validate your assumptions. I loved learning about the Mum Test—when testing, ask people outside of your family and immediate community to remove some inherent bias.
📚 Key Takeaway #5: The Power of a Pitch
The highlight of the program for me was perfecting my pitch. In just 90 seconds, I had to convey my idea, goals, and strategy—and it worked! Securing £1,000 in funding was proof of how powerful a clear and compelling elevator pitch can be. Learning to concisely and clearly communicate your mission, vision and strategy is game changing. Focus on answering the key questions What problem are you solving? What’s your solution? Why are you the right person to make it happen?
📚 My Biggest Takeaway
The most valuable lesson I learned is that clarity is everything. Whether you’re solving a problem, crafting a value proposition, or delivering a pitch, the ability to articulate your idea clearly and confidently makes all the difference.
I’m so grateful to UCL Innovation & Enterprise and Kaitlin Fritz for this opportunity and the funding to take my idea to the next stage. I recommend that anyone reading this who can apply for this programme to do so, however for others, these takeaways are a good starting point.
I’m excited to share more with you soon about what I’m building, but until then, I hope these insights inspire you to take the next step in your entrepreneurial journey. Stay tuned for next week’s Money Mondays, where we dive back into book summaries to fuel your growth journey...
Also please share your ideas and journeys, have you ever pitched an idea or launched a business? I’d love to hear your experiences and insights in the comments..
