For Stewart Bewley, Founder of Amplify, it was one conversation that changed everything. A friend, fearful of speaking in public asked me to help her prepare a speech. I coached her through some tried and tested drama school and “on the road” warm up exercises - posture, breathing and voice; after twenty minutes she was transformed, in confidence and in presenting skill. I saw the need, the opportunity and Amplify was born. Very soon I realised the need for excellent pitching in the Startup scene - techies have great ideas, but no idea how to present. A couple of free presentation workshops later, I was invited to speak at Google Campus on “Pitch Perfect”. Wayra (Telefónica) were in the audience; they hired me to coach their companies for demo day, re-hired me, put me on retainer and opened wide the door to other Accelerators; Techstars, Microsoft Ventures, Oxygen Accelerator and now KPMG continue to hire Amplify to coach the startups they support. As the team has grown and we have grown, developing our product to make it as bespoke as our clients want it. We have designed two-day boot camp communication intensives for Telefónica’s Graduate program, six month Personal Impact Courses for Markit group and coached Senior Executives from Edelman, Ford, Fujitsu, GE and Microsoft. We have become truly global, working with a huge variety of clients, yet our DNA will always remain Startup through and through.