Editorial

The first pitch

An early idea, tested out loud. Lois, Head Yaadie at YAAD, looks back on the first YAAD x Afribond pitch night in the Salon at Town Hall by Bottaccio, where four founders pitched new ideas and young businesses for feedback and connections rather than a cash prize.

The first pitch

By Lois, Head Yaadie at YAAD SPACE CIC

On our prep call, one of the first things the founders asked was whether there was a cash prize. There wasn’t (yikes, were they going to pull out?). We’d wanted one but didn’t have the budget, so we told them straight: the feedback and the network in the room would be the prize of the night.

The night proved it better than we could have. Pelumi Nubi stepped off a plane after an 18-hour journey to pitch in the Salon at Town Hall by Bottaccio, our host venue partner, and left as our winner. She is building Lumi, “the global courage brand for kids”: a children’s entertainment brand that uses a small purple car’s adventures to help children believe they, too, can be brave. The car is real. Pelumi drove it from London to Lagos in 2024, and its name is Lumi. In a video afterwards, she said putting herself in that room widened her surface area of luck, and that every founder should do the same.

A founder pitches to the panel and audience in the Salon

Guests applaud during the YAAD x Afribond pitch night

Built for the first year

YAAD exists for creatives aged 25 and over. Most early-stage support is built for people under 25, and much of it stops at 30. After that, you age out, just when many people are building something, or sitting on an idea that’s still waiting for its first real audience. Almost nothing gives you a physical room to test that idea out loud.

We know that gap first-hand. YAAD has had real growth and backing since our first week, but we were turned down for pitch opportunities because we were too young, or hadn’t hit a certain revenue threshold. So, with Afribond, we built the room we needed.

Before it’s finished

founders

minutes to pitch

minutes of questions

4/4

pitchers left with a good contact

Four founders, each with an idea or young business, had ten minutes to pitch and ten to answer questions from an experienced panel. It wasn’t a funding round, but a chance to hear what works and what doesn’t from people who’ve been there, in a room that was on their side. The scorecard rewarded a clear idea, a clear audience and a realistic plan for the next 12 to 24 months, not a finished business.

The first year is when feedback is cheapest. When an idea is still soft, one good question can change its shape. A year in, the same question can cost you time, money or a customer. Pitching early means hearing what you can’t hear from inside your own head: the question you didn’t prepare for, the gap you didn’t see, the person in the room who knows someone.

A letterboard welcoming guests to the Creative and Media Pitch Night, YAAD x Afribond

Two guests in the audience, one holding a pitch night card

A useful pressure test

Debbie Mojibola is building Stylist Checked, a beauty discovery and planning app designed around how women already find and organise their beauty lives. Right now, your inspiration might live on Pinterest, your hairstylist on Instagram and another professional somewhere in your screenshots. Stylist Checked brings them together, so you can save the professional as easily as you save the look.

She’d run pop-ups and events, but wanted to test the idea under a bit of pressure, among other creative founders. “I think you constantly need those moments as a founder because they force you to step outside of your own bubble and test whether the way you see the business makes sense to other people too.”

The conversation that stayed with her was about scale, and what Stylist Checked could look like in the US. “I already believe Stylist Checked has the potential to become much bigger, but it was exciting to have somebody else look at what I’m building and immediately start thinking about international scale, potentially even sooner than I had anticipated.”

Now she is thinking more seriously about how she communicates that bigger picture. “The behaviour has changed, but the infrastructure around it hasn’t really caught up.”

Two guests deep in conversation on a sofa in the Salon

A guest listens from a sofa in the Salon

The start, not the finish line

There were four panellists and around 60 people in the room, and every pitcher told us they left with at least one good contact, particularly from the panel. Debbie has a few calls arranged over the next few weeks with people she met that night. “At this stage, introductions, advice, partnerships or simply having another founder to exchange ideas with is invaluable.”

In a couple of weeks, we’ll get back in touch with the pitchers to find out what those conversations turned into. YAAD is just starting out too, and their stories help us learn what works.

Yaad is the Jamaican Patois word for home, but it runs deeper: comfort and roots. Every space we’re in has to feel comfortable, which for us means laughs, drinks, food and music, things inherent to Caribbean culture and Black culture more widely. We also try to connect everyone who comes with someone else in the room. That’s how a pitch night becomes a network.

If you’re sitting on an idea, don’t wait until it’s finished to test it out loud. YAAD Clubhouse, our Black History Month residency in Hammersmith, is open throughout October, and everyone from the pitch night is invited down to keep talking. So are you.

Even if you come alone, you don’t leave alone.

See what’s on at YAAD Clubhouse

Two guests share a laugh during the evening

PHOTO CREDITS JOHNNY MOSCA

About YAAD and Afribond

YAAD SPACE CIC is a new non-profit building a Clubhouse for the Culture and the Curious: a multifunctional makerspace, co-working hub and third space for over-25s in West London. We ran 29 creative workshops and events over the summer, but you don’t have to call yourself a creative to join us. Follow YAAD on Instagram (@yaad.irl) and LinkedIn.

Afribond is an international platform and networking organisation that connects African innovation, startups and investment opportunities with global investors, corporations and the diaspora, mainly in the UK. Find out more at afri-bond.com.

Town Hall by Bottaccio was the host venue partner for the first YAAD x Afribond pitch night, held in the Salon on 30 September 2026. For Town Hall, evenings like this one are what the building is for: a civic and cultural forum where new ideas get their first hearing and the conversations shaping what comes next can begin.