Mariana Marquez, co-founder of Metaspeech, explains why the business should win the Startup of the Year category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition:
We are Mariana and Emma. We are choreographers and the founders of Metaspeech. Our method offers an alternative approach to public speaking training. It is all about moving, thinking on your feet, experiencing, and embodying flow.
Last year, our training helped our clients raise a combined £12m, win the South by South West (SXSW) pitch competition, and get funded on the BBC’s Dragon’s Den. We count Google, TechWeek, Trendwatching and 4YFN as our clients, coaching from seed-funded startups at accelerators like Seedcamp, to executives at Ocado, Propercorn, and Spotify.
We have created more than 70 ‘choreographies’ for our entrepreneur and CEO clients. All these pitches and talks were choreographed, using space, time, movement, projection and connection to one’s audience.
So who would have thought that choreographers could be this productive in one year? In our first year of trading as Metaspeech we turned over £25,000. We’ve proven that our skills can transform the way people approach public speaking. Public speaking is another application of performance and choreography is its ideal structuring mechanism.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
