Kicking Off Our Life’s A Pitch Series

We couldn’t be more excited for this one! The inaugural Life’s A Pitch session kicks off on Twitter Spaces on Thursday, September 23 at 5 pm CET / 11 am EST. You can tune in right here.

Our three selected startups will deliver rapid-fire, five-minute pitches to our jury of esteemed journalists and media leaders. Our panel will then give the companies detailed feedback, actionable story-crafting advice, and ideas for individualized press strategies and angles. Then we’ll open up the floor to the audience for a fifteen-minute question and answer session with our startups and panel of judges.

We’ve compiled an all star team of top-tier journalists and media leaders to join me in giving valuable advice to the startups:

• Dan Cooper is the Senior Editor of Engadget and covers all manner of tech, science, and gadgets. Cooper is also the host of weekly podcast The Engadget Eurocast, and a contributor to The New York Times, The A.V. Club, and more.

• Shona Ghosh is a Senior Tech Editor for the business section of Insider. She was awarded Tech Journalist of the Year at the 2019 UK Tech Awards. She is a regular guest on BBC and Sky News, and her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Telegraph, Al Jazeera, and NME.

• Robin Wauters is the founder of Tech.eu, the co-founder of Startup Europe Lens and BeCentral, and a journalist, analyst, speaker, and event curator. He has previously worked on the editorial staffs of TechCrunch, The Next Web, and Virtualization.com.

• Martin Bryant is the founder of Big Revolution, a business and marketing consultancy for startups and growth-stage tech and media firms. He previously served as Editor-in-Chief of The Next Web, and has appeared on BBC Breakfast, Sky News, and Good Morning Wales.

And now, without further ado – and in no particular order – meet the startups who have earned a spot to pitch in our first session:

Mystery is a unique events coordination platform that delivers one-of-a-kind B2C and B2B experiences. Bypassing tedious “virtual happy hours” that fail to connect employees to one another or to their company’s values, Mystery creates meaningful virtual and in-person events that strengthen company culture and employee camaraderie. With the help of local vendors capable of integrating tech-enabled hospitality touches, Mystery designs tailor-made experiences and coordinates scheduling, technology logistics, and item supply. Their virtual and in-person (with proper safety protocols in place) offerings range from painting classes, beer tastings, and cocktail-making courses to outdoor excursions and educational events.

Skiller Whale is a London-based startup determined to turn “training as a perk” into “learning as a core” through live, hands-on micro-coaching on topics targeted at individuals’ skill gaps. Admin, scheduling, impact measurement, and individual assessments are handled in-house, with no extra burden on the client. Courses span a wide range of languages, runtimes, libraries, DevOps technologies and tools. Benefits to companies include decreases in tech debt and delivery time and increases in developer performance and confidence – amounting to a significant boost to morale and a company’s bottom line.

Verisart is the world’s leading blockchain certification service, supplying certificates of authenticity for physical and digital art, collectibles, and other creative works. The startup works with galleries of all sizes and visual artists at all levels, including world-famous artists Shepard Fairey, Penny Slinger, and Derek Boshier. Based out of Los Angeles, the company offers standard blockchain certification with museum-quality certificates, mints NFTs, and provides Fair Trade Art certifications according to strict criteria. With more than 50,000 artworks certified to date, helping artists do business by making blockchain certification easy, affordable, professional-quality, and attractive is at the heart of Verisart’s mission. We hope you’ll join us on Twitter to watch the session with these three amazing companies and ask lots of questions of our panelists. See you all there!