BYOB » E-resistible interview

How did you first come up with your business idea?

E-resistible.co.uk is an online takeaway website that connects local takeaway restaurants to customers facilitating online ordering & payment. The idea came from a module at Warwick Business School called The Integrative Project which was a Dragons’ Den style module where all 350 1st year undergraduates are divided into groups of 6 & told to come up with a business idea to pitch to investors.


What was your preparation for the Be Your Own Boss finals?

Our preparation for the BYOB finals ... involved writing a really compelling piece for the judges to select us, I think we had to get our business ideas down into 250 words and convince the judges that we were good enough to pitch to the panel on the night. Once we were told we had made the final the focus was then on our business plan.

We divided each area of the plan up so that I focused on our marketing plan, Stephen did our introduction and "big idea" / operations, finally Velin did our financial projections & cash flow forecasts etc.

It was very important to get the business plan right because the judges initial impressions of the business were from this because they received the plan 24 hours before the final pitches. This means that they have time to pick out a flaw or error to confront you with on the big night.

After the business plan we had to sort out our 15 minute pitch. We brain stormed the best way to do this & decided that to win we would have to do something different. It would still have to be professional but it needed to be something that grabbed the audience's attention. After introducing E-resistible and placing an order live during the pitch on the big screen we then announced that a member of the audience has just won the order that we had placed when it arrived. This went down very well with the audience & got them on our side (remember that they have one vote on the night too). We then took on roles of different customer groups for E-resistible & explained why we each thought it was a good idea & why the demand exists.

The 2nd half of our presentation was much more serious and for the judges based on sound financial figures with a strong conclusion and it seemed to go down well. Just after we finished "conveniently" the takeaway order arrived which we had placed for the audience member to eat while we answered our questions!


If there was one piece of advice you could give to a Be Your Own Boss entrant, what would it be?

Don't underestimate how much the judges will look over your financial figures. Remember that they are supposed to be "investors" so you need to show them exciting projections based on sound assumptions. I.e. we could say we are generating Y revenue from X number of restaurants at the moment therefore if we increase X restaurants then we will make revenue Y this big!


How has your life changed since winning Be Your Own Boss 2008?

We now run E-resistible full time. We operate a call centre and employ 3 people full time. We have over 400 restaurants and are set to sell over 3/4 of a million pounds of takeaway food this year. Life's changed quite alot!


Where do you see e-Resistable progressing to in the future?

We have some very strong competitors who have just began a national television campaign. We are currently in 3rd place in the Online Takeaway market and would like to chase down the "top 2" and make ourselves strong competitors. We want to be operational in the majority of UK cities by the end of 2010 and expanding internationally in subsequent years!