In early May, anyone that is friends with Jade or myself, or even those of you that know our mothers, would have been made aware of the Virgin Media Pioneer’s #VMPitch2Rich competition that would give 4 companies the opportunity to pitch their idea to a panel of business leaders at Sir Richard Branson’s house. This panel consisted of Jamal Edwards (founder of SB.TV), Richard Reed (co-founder of Innocent Drinks), Nigel Gilbert (Chief Marketing Officer at Virgin Media) and Sir Richard Branson, who needs no introduction. CODOC, for whom I am currently interning, were into the semi-finals of the #VMPitch2Rich competition, which would be decided by a public vote to determine the final four that would be able to pitch at Branson’s Oxford home. I was pestering everyone I know to vote and, on the final day, CODOC sneaked into 3rd place with 1,326 votes. To illustrate how close the voting was, the top 5 were separated by only 59 votes and there were only 2 votes between the 4th and 5th placed companies, and ultimately a place in the final.

So to everyone we spoke to and that voted to help CODOC through – THANK YOU! Because of the time you took to click on the box next to ‘Guy Gunaratne – CODOC’, the Willesden Green based company got the opportunity to pitch their CODOC TV layered online video player to the panel and they were awarded £750, as well as catching the attention of the media-based judges, Virgin Media’s Nigel Gilbert and SB.TV’s Jamal Edwards.

To get a peek at CODOC TV, have a look at their 60 second video pitch which helped them progress through the semi-finals.

To see how the day went, check out the video below, which I put together for CODOC (self-plug), as well as the two other videos from Virgin Media Pioneers (shot by TeamCODOC members Krys Kamenou and Tom Cottey) and SB.TV, which features an interview with Sir Richard Branson himself.

I’d definitely recommend that anyone looking to build a new business to check out Virgin Media Pioneers as they are there to support small organisations in difficult economic times. SB.TV is always throwing out great interviews and music entertainment and, of course, visit CODOC. I spent yesterday filming with them (a blog post to come on that soon) and I’m gutted my internship with them is ending soon, as I’m learning a hell of a lot and having a great time with great people.

KYLE