A startup diary entry on the increasingly baffling world of London pitch nights and the confident reinvention of things that already exist
I go to a lot of pitch nights, partly for work, partly because the free wine is generally decent and the people-watching is unbeatable. Last Thursday, a founder stood up, clicker in hand, and pitched, with total unblinking confidence, an app that lets friends coordinate plans in a shared space with notifications and threaded replies. I sat there for a full ninety seconds waiting for the twist, the thing that made this different from a group chat. There was no twist. It was a group chat. He called it “social infrastructure for modern friendship.”
The Room’s Reaction Genuinely Alarmed Me
Nobody laughed. Nobody so much as raised an eyebrow. Several people around me were nodding, actually nodding, at the phrase “social infrastructure,” and one man near the front asked a genuinely earnest question about the monetisation strategy for what is, again, a group chat. I began to wonder if I had missed something, some crucial technical distinction that separated this from the messaging app already installed on every phone in the room.
I Asked a Question, Possibly Unwisely
I put my hand up, because I could not help myself, and asked, as gently as I could manage, how this differed from simply making a group chat. He answered, without a flicker of hesitation, that existing group chats “weren’t purpose-built for intentional connection,” a phrase so thoroughly devoid of actual meaning that I found myself almost impressed by its construction. He then moved swiftly to his next slide, a chart projecting significant user growth based on numbers I can only describe as aspirational.
The Investors in the Room Seemed Genuinely Intrigued
Two separate people asked for his card afterward. One described the pitch, within my earshot, as “refreshingly simple,” which I suppose is one way to describe an app whose entire functionality already exists, for free, on every phone in this country. I do not know these investors’ full portfolios, but I now have genuine questions about at least one of them.
A Pattern I Have Started Noticing More Broadly
This is not, sadly, an isolated incident. I have now personally witnessed pitches for a to-do list app described as “cognitive offloading infrastructure,” a shared calendar described as “temporal alignment tooling,” and, on one memorable evening, a pitch for what was, functionally, a spreadsheet, presented as “a living document ecosystem for decision clarity.” I begin to suspect the entire London startup scene has collectively agreed that any sufficiently confident piece of jargon can transform an existing free tool into a fundable proposition.
What I Have Learned to Listen For
I have developed, through sheer repeated exposure, a genuine ear for the specific cadence of a pitch built entirely on vocabulary rather than substance. The tell is usually a noun paired with the word “infrastructure,” or a perfectly ordinary concept rebranded as an “ecosystem.” Once you hear it, you cannot unhear it, and I now spend most pitch nights quietly counting occurrences rather than actually absorbing the business model.
Where the Group Chat App Stands Now
He raised, by my last count, a genuinely substantial pre-seed round. The app, when I finally downloaded it out of morbid curiosity, is a group chat. It has a slightly nicer colour scheme than the messaging app I already use. I wish him, genuinely, the very best of luck, and I remain available for consultation on any future rebranding of a to-do list as “temporal infrastructure for the intentional self.” Further London startup pitch diary entries continue at bohiney.com, with additional London business coverage available at prat.uk.
SOURCE: https://prat.UK/