PILLOW Property Partners, a professional holiday home management company, was crowned winner at last week’s 2018 Startup Summit – securing a £100,000 prize from the STV Growth Fund.
The STV Growth Fund was established to support the business community in Scotland, making £5 million available through airtime marketing space to connect businesses with consumers earlier in their business journey.
For the second year, STV partnered with Startup Summit – one of the UK’s leading events for entrepreneurship – as part of its commitment to drive the Scottish economy.
The £100,000 STV Growth Fund prize money will provide Pillow with access to STV’s airtime marketing space and will contribute towards the cost of producing an on-screen advertisement.
Harnessing STV’s wealth of experience in creative brand development and consumer insight, membership of the STV Growth Fund will also provide campaign optimisation and analysis to ensure Pillow maximises their advertising effectiveness.
Startup Summit, attended by 1,000 delegates, brought together the next generation of entrepreneurs to engage with experts, build a network and gain valuable tools for long-term success, and featured workshops and interactive sessions with over 30 speakers such as Mike Welch, founder of Blackcircles.com and Atterley and Leela Srinivasan, CMO of SurveyMonkey.
The three finalists – Pillow CEO, Scott Weir; founder of Estendio and Present Pal creator, Chris Hughes; and co-founder of MyWay Digital Health, Debbie Wake – were shortlisted from 100 candidates and invited to pitch to a panel of judges at FutureX’s Startup Summit 2018 in Edinburgh last week, with the judging panel facing the tough task of choosing one business to take home the prize.
Having been selected as the winning business, Pillow has secured a fantastic package of business support from IBM, Adopt An Intern, Johnston Carmichael as well as from STV. Additionally, event hosts, FutureX, will provide a place on their Silicon Valley Accelerator Programme, where Scott will have the opportunity to meet with leading investors and executives from global brands operating out of California.
Pillow Property Partners has built an online platform that matches property owners with guests from around the world.
Scott Weir, CEO at Pillow Property Partners, said: “Winning the pitching competition was amazing in itself, especially considering the high level of the other fantastic competitors. But the support package from STV is life changing and will have a massive effect on the growth of my business all across Scotland and beyond.”
STV commercial director, Peter Reilly, said: “In our second year of media partnership with Startup Summit we found out more about the brilliant businesses that are starting, growing and scaling across Scotland right now.
“STV attracts mass audiences – reaching 87 per cent of Scots on air, online and on demand – and we are pleased to be able to offer STV Growth Fund support to Scott and the team at Pillow, providing access to their consumers to accelerate the growth of their business.”
Picture shows (L-R): Zoi Kantounatou, co-founder, FutureX; Scott Weir, CEO, Pillow Property Partners; and Bruce Walker, co-founder, FutureX.
ENDS
For further information, please contact the STV press office:
Katie Martin: 0141 300 3109, katie.martin@stv.tv
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Contact: Katie Martin
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