On Monday night we were at [email protected] 4.0, the latest incarnation of the startup competition hosted by HRH The Duke of York in St. James’ Palace. As the winners of [email protected] 3.0, we weren’t competing this time – but we were asked to provide a theme tune.

Now, writing a piece for the monarchy is not to be taken lightly (we see ourselves as a modern-day Handel in this regard), so we got our composing hats on. We quickly settled on using our Electronic style (it was a tech crowd, after all). But we didn’t think the melodies were up to royal standards – so we used this as inspiration to improve our machine learning algorithms and totally rework the way Electronic melodies are created by our software. Read More

Just over two years ago, I was invited to the first Pitch at Palace event in St. James’ Palace, hosted by The Duke of York.
Held every six months, hundreds of companies, from start-ups to scale-ups apply for inclusion in the event, just over 40 are selected for Bootcamp (where they are assigned a mentor or ‘Elevator’) and then 12 pitch on the night to a heady mixture of business people, entrepreneurs, investors and many more.

Last night was Pitch 4.0. It was one of the best events I’ve been to, not just because of the surroundings, but the quality of businesses, the quality of pitches, and above all, the quality of people in the room. A royal entrepreneurial eco-system (should that be E-cosystem?) of people who can genuinely make things happen (not just talk about them happening). Read More