Upon review of all of the independent outlet sites pitched, the clear best pitches of the bunch, in my opinion, came from Veer, Luke, and Mark.
Veer's pitch is for a sports website called 22 Yards, which focuses exclusively on one of the fastest-growing sports in the world, cricket. The goal of the site is to not only give accurate and journalistic coverage of both national and international cricket games, but also to spread the cricket love and get more people interested in the sport. I particularly love the idea of expanding to the field of fantasy sports, as it treats cricket as being as legitimate of a sport as something like football, and allows for an audience who perhaps is not as familiar with the game to get into the sport through multiple avenues. During the pitch, he really got the potential backers excited about the idea of a dedicated indy cricket site.
Luke's pitch, People 2 People, really only has one major weakness: the name. Aside from that, literally everything checks out. It is evident that he put his entire being into this proposal, going into exquisite detail on how his website will work and what kinds of content will be produced. He happily took feedback when discussing the idea of subdomains for different cities or changing the name, and he got everyone excited about his social media plans. Unlike any other presenter, he even went into detail on the technology budget, citing specific cameras and audio equipment for what he is looking into.
Finally, Mark's pitch, 150 Square Feet, is the perfect niche website for someone who wants something really weird but practical. In the modern age, people live in smaller houses and need to think more economically. Mark uses this need and fills it with an outlet dedicated to that cause. The biggest strength with the site is its personality. Of course the site would have a Tiny Blog and a Tiny Store. But the donate button? That's gotta be huge. Puns aside, the site also only really necessitates a tiny budget, which means that should donations work out better than anticipated he can work to expand the site into other forms of media such as a newsletter, which he mentioned.
