BSN Young Enterprise Win Second Prize in Company Pitch Battle

Congratulations to this year’s BSN Young Enterprise Team, who recently won second place in the Jong Ondernemen Company Launch Pitch Battle! The Pitch Battles took place on 28 January at the Microlab in Rotterdam, with Sixth Form-aged students from 35 schools across South Holland participating. The Young Enterprise team, comprised of Senior School Voorschoten (SSV) students Luca (CEO), Leon (CFO, Leona, Mylo, Ton, Umer and Adrian, impressed the judges with their pitch for their product, the HotNCold thermos.

Jong Ondernemen / Young Enterprise: What is It?

Jong Ondernemen is the Dutch equivalent of Young Enterprise and aims to teach young people all about entrepreneurship. It allows them to utilise and practise skills essential to running a business – this includes developing an effective business plan, conducting market research, pitching their idea, and financial literacy. Students gain a deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges that running a business can present, which in turn, is excellent preparation for potential future entrepreneurship!

The Product: HotNCold

Depending on what temperature you like your drinks, Team HotNCold’s product, can keep your hot drinks hot and your cold drinks cold! What makes the team’s product so unique is that the stainless steel thermos has a temperature reading so you’ll always know how hot – or cold – your drink of choice is. What’s more, its sleek design makes it a product you’ll want to show off!

The Students Reflect on Their Achievement

The students on the experience:

“On  28 January we entered the Jong Ondernemen pitch battles with little hope of winning it. We’d rehearsed many times, and when the time came, we were racked with nerves, and scared of how things would go. When our pitch was over, we didn’t think that we would win anything, the other pitches were too good for that. And when the judges announced that we’d won, we were still in disbelief.

As we look back at our victory, we realise that we’d learned a lot and hope to do even better in the future.

The judges clearly thought that our Smart thermos ‘HotNCold’ was a brilliant idea; clearly filling a gap in the market. Sales will begin soon at the BSN– watch out for our smart thermos marketing campaign and support our business by buying your own thermos!” – Luca & Leon, Year 10 SSV students

What’s Next for Our Young Entrepreneurs?

Following the team’s excellent performance at the Pitch Battle, the Young Entrepreneurs have been invited to take part in a project with Euronext – the Blue Challenge, an entrepreneurship education programme aimed at preparing young people from 16-18 for employment and entrepreneurship.

The students will have two online training sessions with Euronext before they deliver their pitch online at the Euronext competition finals.

Special Thanks To...

A big thank you to Anne-Marie Smith, the Young Enterprise Coordinator at Senior School Voorschoten, and Pierre-Philippe Valot (SSV). Anne-Marie has coached the Young Enterprise team throughout this process, with Pierre-Philippe providing valuable support.

A huge well done to the team on their achievement – we’re sure there’s lots more in store for these Young Entrepreneurs!

If you’d like to purchase your own HotNCold thermos, they will be on sale from this March at Senior School Voorschoten – stay tuned for further information on how and where to buy.