Lynked Gone Extinct: Business Competition Sparks Outrage – Rohan Shah, MTS

The 12-week Programme offers an impressive scheme of events, as students receive the opportunity to set up and run their own company from the company name and product to management of the company’s finances. A variety of mediums are available to promote and sell the products to the public, including pop-up shops and the brand-new online store, YE trading station. 

The Programme, and perhaps more so the financial rewards that the scheme proffered, inevitably appealed to the Richard Branson-shaped hearts of the students at Merchant Taylors’ School. Within weeks of being introduced to the Programme, three teams were assembled and bid against each other to attempt to build the most successful business within a mere few months.

Among these teams was a band of thirteen fierce businessmen working under an NFC tag company called Lynked. Upon observing the team at Lynked in action, it becomes more than obvious that they are responsible for and embody the ‘business’ portion of the word ‘businessmen’. Why? – because they meant business. They marched into meetings like a hide of tigers, brandishing their three-piece suits and biro pens as if enacting a scene from the popular television series Suits. It would be difficult to tell the difference between their weekly meet-ups and a corporate board meeting at Goldman Sachs; congregated around a table which had the privilege of witnessing thirteen sagacious minds in action, Lynked displayed shrewd business skills, calculated and confident approaches to running the business smoothly, and intelligent methods to generate maximum profit, fuelled by the gaping eyes of each magnate who had developed dollar signs in place of their pupils. 

Lynked undoubtedly possessed the necessary ingredients of a recipe for success in the world of student business. Thus, as the finals for the competition arrived in May, the team from Taylors’ looked ready as ever to enter battle with their rival businesses. A military lexicon indeed proves fitting to describe their impressive record until this point, which possesses all the tenacity and mettle of the reign of Richard the Lionheart. The reign of Lynked saw a number of impressive accolades procured to their name, including Most Innovative Product at Watford and Best Customer Service at Brent Cross. Although promoting the smallest product, they generated the largest war chest as total profits surpassed the four-figure mark, bestowing them the financial crown over the kingdom under which all other student businesses within the city boasted measly figures. And so their entrepeunerial army of thirteen set out on a drizzly Tuesday in May to engage in the final battle of their campaign, expecting to return triumphant. 

How events unfolded at the finals could not be anticipated even by soothsayer. Lynked displayed a dominant performance, boasting their achievements obtained throughout the Programme that could not be matched by a single other team even if they had double the time to catch up with the NFC business. This was adequately reflected in the awarding of Best Presentation to the team at Lynked, however their superiority across the Programme purely from a financial perspective backed by an innovative product deserved to be rewarded with the coronation of the Taylors’ team as the undisputed champions of Young Enterprise 2023. 

Certainly, members within the crew itself seemed to think so. “In a profit-making task,” concludes Ishan Kotecha, department of finance at Lynked, “we have asserted ourselves as the Apple or Microsoft equivalent of the Young Enterprise Programme. Hitting the £1000 profit mark itself should be enough to win the scheme.” 

Unlike the great medieval crusader, therefore, the team returned to Taylors’ bearing faces of defeat. Above all, however, an air of outrage emanated from their dejected bodies on account of the nature of their defeat. Each and every member of Lynked were not only optimistic for a victory in the finals, but were confident they would receive one, as their track record in the Programme offered high prospects of a landslide victory. A question mark began to be drawn next to the legitimacy of the scheme after its controversial judgement in the finals, and whilst it is mere speculation there is strong feeling that the verdict was arrived at following a trail markedly distinct to the reality of the Programme. What can be declared with upmost certainty, however, is that the team did resemble the great crusader in his moniker: despite not emerging victorious in the end, Lynked fought with the heart of a lion.