HSBC Unipreneurs - The semi-final!
Yesterday, Ali and I attended the semi-finals of the 2008 HSBC Unipreneur Awards, and here’s how the day went….
It was an early start for the both of us - suited and booted, we took on the rush hour commute to HSBC Tower in Canary Wharf. Armed with a selection of our promotional material, a laptop and all the RateMyPlacement chat you could ever want to hear, we got ourselves set up and awaited the judges arrival at 10am.
The judging panel consisted of (in the order we met them):
- Jamie Murray Wells, founder of Glasses Direct.
- Professor Robert Blackburn, Director, Small Business Research Centre, Kingston University.
- Jenny Little, Enterprise Editor of the Financial Mail on Sunday.
- Huw Morgan, Head of Business Banking at HSBC
- Dr. Lorna Collins, Director of Flying Start.
- Emma Crosby, presenter on Sky News.
The next two and a half hours were spent chatting with the judges about the website and our business. We were quizzed on our progress to date and plans for the future. All of the judges seemed genuinely interested and asked some great questions, and Ali and I were exhausted but buzzing come 12.30 when the judging ended.
Next up was a few photographs, a chance to chat to some of the other semi-finalists and a very corporate looking lunch, which as you’d expect, we took full advantage of!
I think Ali would agree when I say it was a great morning and excellent experience for us both, and one we both thoroughly enjoyed. We’ll find out in the next two to three weeks if we’ve progressed through to the Final and be in with a chance of picking up the £20,000 prize, so fingers crossed!
Click here to view photos from the day.
We’ll be sure to keep you updated!
February 29th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Congratulations guys - sounds like it was a great experience….
I hope you manage to reach the final - what is the format?
March 1st, 2008 at 10:58 am
The final is a ”gala evening at London’s BAFTA theatre” (according to HSBC), which would be awesome! We would quizzed on-stage before a live audience, who will then vote for the candidate who has impressed them most for the 20k first prize… Fingers crossed eh!?