Tech's Royal Kingmaker

Startups are getting access to one of the world’s most powerful address books, thanks to Prince Andrew, Duke of York.

- Parmy Olson

So what do you do?” Queen Elizabeth II asked pointedly, looking up at Michael Rolph, a 35-year-old software nerd, who stood in a line of entrepreneurs in one of the state rooms of St. James’s Palace. The queen’s second son, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, who perhaps had the most at stake in the conversation, stood nearby listening.

Nervously, Rolph replied that he ran a mobile app startup called Yoyo Wallet. And what, the queen asked, did Rolph think of the duke’s big new project, the one where startups likes Yoyo came to the palace to pitch their ideas to some of the most powerful business leaders and investors in the country? Rolph explained that two years earlier, the duke’s program had connected him to one of Britain’s top coffee chains, and on this December day they were announcing a partnership.

“What took you so long?” the queen quipped. Rolph couldn’t help but chuckle. “Well,

ma’am,” he said, “in the intervening two years we had to build our business.” The queen gave him a nod and moved on down the line. This was the seventh and most recent Pitch@Palace, a semiannual series of networking events that the duke started three years ago. Each time, a dozen startups pitch their businesses to some 400 power brokers inside the crimson state rooms of St. James’s, the 500-year old palace built by Henry VIII that sits next door to Buckingham Palace. Surrounded by 17th-century paintings and fuzzy wallpaper, the entrepreneurs expound on proprietary algorithms, mobile platforms and machine learning. It’s something of a Y Combinator meets Downton Abbey, where storied tradition and creative destruction embrace awkwardly in hopes of ushering in the future a tad more quickly.