In attendance was Peter Cullinane, founder of Lewis Road Creamery, sharing his secrets to milky success and Frankie Walker, chief mixologist for Johnnie Walker.

It was all delightfully pleasant but a surprising twist in the last seconds of the PitchCircus entrepreneurs’ contest saw the final results disappear from the screen, forcing MC and Idealog publisher Vincent Heeringa to declare Mark Major of Gamestarter the winner the top prize.

Mark wins the prize package of $1000, an hour with IP specialist AJ Park and a short but informative conversation with marketing guru Mike Hutcheson.

Not everyone celebrated the win. “I was surprised at Heeringa’s executive call, to be honest,” said one unnamed attendee. “I’m thinking of approaching the parents of St Bedes for a judicial review.”

However organisers talked down the threat of riots at CreativeHQ and offered instead to toast all three PitchCircus contestants with a fine Johnnie Walker Black and declare them all winners, “in the own special way.”

For the record, the three contestants were:

Mark Major – GameStarter, a crowd-sourced game development company

Kendall Flutey – Banqer, an online financial literacy tool

Conor Finlayson – Hatcher, a social media tool for inner-city meet ups (Tinder meets kebabs)

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