On the 24 April, qLegal team members attended Elevating Founders’ semi-final pitch competition. Clemence Tanzi, Janan Foster and Szabina Horvath from qLegal attended the event, networking and discussing qLegal’s services with founders and attendees.
The ten semi-finalists pitching on the day for a chance to advance to the finals were: GG Care, Community Red, Treeconomy, Tern Eco LTD, Green Online Spaces ltd, Accessercise, Adirelounge, FutureMatch, StepStack and Symbiotex Ltd. The event saw them pitch their business to a panel of three judges: Joe Stringer from Octopus Ventures, Carrie Babcock from Beringea and Sonya Iovieno from Silicon Valley Bank. Each panelist followed up the pitches with specific questions to the founders on various points, including their product, the size of their market, business model, customer retention, market competitors, what success looks like for them, and the status of their technological development.
After deliberation, the five finalists were announced: Accessercise, GG Care, SymbioTex, Tern Eco, Treeconomy. This past year, Treeconomy hosted a qLegal extern for one day a week for 6 months. Treeconomy uses technology to quantify, track and deliver reliable data to help markets direct private finance towards carbon offsetting initiatives that reverse nature loss and combat climate change. The qLegal team was delighted for one of its externship hosts to progress to the next stage of the competition.
The five finalists will pitch for the final event at Elevating Founders Europe 2023 on Tuesday 13 June 2023 (start-up zone) at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre, as part of London Tech Week 2023. qLegal has been invited to attend the final event and will be offering one-on-one conversations with founders and entrepreneurs about their legal strategies and how qLegal services might help them on the day.
Attending this event was a chance for qLegal staff members to tune into the start-up ecosystem to appreciate the current needs of the market. It was also a great opportunity to explain what qLegal has to offers to entrepreneurs, in particular how the Legal Advisory clinic and Externships programmes might directly support their business.