Financial News is pleased to announce the winning entry in the competition held at its inaugural Awards for Excellence in Private Equity. Guests were given the name of an invention, such as Tupperware or the Gillette safety razor, and asked to imagine they had just got into an elevator with a venture capitalist (VC), giving them the 30 seconds between floors to pitch for financial backing.

We judged the entries on memorability, so it is ironic that the runner-up forgot to write down his or her name on this entertaining pitch for the telephone: