The distinguished Hult International Business School asked PitchBook’s London team to give students a real-world business challenge to solve. Getting the help of some of Europe’s brightest minds? How could we pass that up?
So, we formulated the challenge that 12 teams of 78 students—all with varied backgrounds, nationalities and expertise—would work on for two months: What future operating model will best deliver PitchBook London’s ambitious growth plans through 2022?
The students were tasked with researching how fast-growing SaaS companies can effectively expand their satellite offices, and then advise PitchBook on how to address potential issues such as maintaining company culture across offices, communicating between different time zones, what to move and what to keep at headquarters.
Midway through the challenge, we went to Hult to check in on the evolution of the projects and help refine the work the students had done. By that point, most of them had completed their secondary research, which was predominantly looking into the strategies of other SaaS companies. Some teams also wanted to confirm they were going in the right direction with their primary research, which included interviews with employees at relevant SaaS companies about employee satisfaction, internal structure and reporting. Their progress was exciting, and we were looking forward to the final presentations.
We judged the final projects on four criteria: solution, analysis, presentation composition and presentation delivery—and were blown away by the high quality of the work and impressive conduct of the students. You could feel the excitement in the room when we gave away the much-deserved first prize. The winning team’s proposed solution was based on thorough research that went way beyond what we were expecting, and their killer presentation conveyed a great team dynamic. Congrats to the winners!
