Pitch Competition
Six teams pitched a solution for The Gold Trader; the room scored four things, and one team earned the build.
Class recording
The lecture recording posts here after the class is taught.
Class summary
The stakes first, as numbers: six teams, nine and a half minutes each — seven thirty to pitch and two minutes of questions from the room — four criteria, and one team that builds it. Then the problem itself, drawn out step by step — the customer at the counter, the paper sheet, the same numbers keyed into Excel, the ID photos, all three converging on QuickBooks, the buy order splitting to the customer and to a folder that goes to the police, the day’s report behind it, and the month the piece sits before it can move. Then the criteria as a rubric with teeth: storytelling ability, preparation, understanding of the problem, feasibility of the solution — each with what earns it, what loses it, and which of the four questions the owner never asked out loud it answers. The mechanics followed: every student except the pitching team scores each criterion from one to ten on a form that pops up on their laptop, with an anonymous comment, editable until the class moves on.
The body of the class was the competition itself, run from one slide: nobody knew the order, because the next team was drawn on a wheel right before each pitch — it spun, stopped on a name, dropped confetti, and that team came off the wheel for good. Then a clock per team — pitch, questions, scoring open — with the count of scores arriving in real time. The standings were deliberately never put on the screen: the room judged each pitch on its own terms rather than against a running board. The close was a thank you, and where the results go — every team sees its own averages and its anonymous comments at connect-ai.world/teams, and next class asks the harder question underneath the whole competition — how you decide what to build at all.