Unloc x Verizon — Young Entrepreneurs Challenge
Five young people. One £10,000 prize. One evening that could change the world.
KEY POINTS
- Client: Verizon Business
- Job Type: Event coverage, highlights film & event photography
- Location: Verizon Innovation Hub, Verizon Business HQ, Holborn, London
- Event: Verizon/Unloc Young Entrepreneurs Challenge Grand Final
- Filmed Over: One evening
- Notable Interviews: Piers Linney (ex Dragon’s Den), all five finalists, Verizon judges including Sanjiv Gossain, Head of EMEA Verizon Business
- Deliverables: Highlights film & event photography
- Use Case: Social media, press, internal communications & campaign content
THE CHALLENGE
The Young Entrepreneurs Challenge is one of the most exciting youth entrepreneurship competitions in Europe. Now in its sixth year, the Grand Final brought together five exceptional young finalists from across Europe, each with a tech-led business idea designed to benefit the planet, competing for a £10,000 prize in front of a panel of industry leaders at Verizon’s Innovation Hub in Holborn, London.
The brief was to capture everything. The energy of the pitches. The tension of the judging. The moment the winner was announced. The conversations between some of the brightest young minds in Europe and the industry leaders evaluating them. And the human stories behind five young people who had worked extraordinarily hard to get to that room.
THE PLAN
We arrived at the Verizon Innovation Hub ready for a full evening production in one of London’s most prestigious corporate environments. The Grand Final format meant the evening moved fast, from finalist preparations and opening introductions through to pitches, judging deliberations and the winner announcement. Nothing waited for a camera to be repositioned.
We conducted interviews with all five finalists — Ethan Waisberg, Devi Pathak, Kolatat Phaiboonnukulkij, Theodor Blomberg and Mariia Alipatova, who joined live by video link from Ukraine — drawing out the stories behind their ideas, their journeys to the Grand Final and what the competition meant to them. Young people with extraordinary ideas deserve to be heard properly, not rushed through a thirty second sound bite.
We also sat down with Piers Linney, former Dragon’s Den investor and entrepreneur, alongside Verizon judges including Sanjiv Gossain, General Manager and Head of EMEA for Verizon Business, and John Williams, Marketing Director and CMO for EMEA, APAC and LatAm at Verizon. Each interview was directed to capture not just their assessment of the competition but the genuine enthusiasm these senior leaders had for the young people in front of them.
Alongside the filmed content we captured event photography throughout the evening, documenting the pitches, the judges in deliberation, the finalist interactions and the moment Ethan Waisberg was revealed as the winner of the £10,000 prize, walking away with his oversized cheque and a future that looked considerably brighter than it had a few hours earlier.
Every camera decision was made with the edit in mind. A fast-paced, energetic highlights film that captured the atmosphere, the ambition and the human drama of an evening that genuinely mattered.
THE RESULTS
The Young Entrepreneurs Challenge Grand Final produced a winner who genuinely deserved it. Ethan Waisberg’s AngioGenius, an AI-powered app using NASA-developed technology to detect and monitor eye disease progression from a simple photo taken at home, won the £10,000 prize, a technology support package, mentorship from Verizon and Unloc, and a trip to the One Young World Global Summit.
The highlights film and photography gave Unloc and Verizon a suite of compelling content that captured one of the most impressive evenings in the competition’s six-year history — content that worked across social media, press coverage and internal communications simultaneously.
Verizon were extremely happy with the finished product. In a room full of people doing extraordinary things, that is the standard we always aim for.
CLIENT QUOTE
“I love it! Looks great. Verizon are extremely happy.”
Stuart Cameron, Marketing Manager, Unloc