Your Best Friend's PowerPoint Presentation Might Just Find You a Date

What if your best friend, the person who knows you best, could find you a date?

That's the whole concept behind Pitch Them Perfect, a Dubai dating event where your closest friends take the stage to make the case for why you should be someone's next date.

A slightly terrifying prospect, but maybe a fun one.

Founded by marketing and business development professional Mohamad Ali Akkaoui, Pitch Them Perfect is his latest venture in bringing people together. Akkaoui's work spans brands, business development and experience across sports, food, wellness and lifestyle, with previous work involving major names including Red Bull, Nike and ASICS.

Now he's applying the same people-first thinking to dating, with a little help from PowerPoint.

The idea came to him after hearing about a similar event in the US. Around the same time he found himself sitting with a group of friends, talking about dating apps and how difficult it could be to make genuine connections, even in a city as social as Dubai.

"Dubai is incredibly social, but it can still be surprisingly difficult to make genuine connections," he says. "Everyone wants to meet new people, but nobody really wants another app or another awkward singles night where you don't know what's happening."

So he decided to start small. He planned a first edition, announced the concept with a video and went to bed.

By the next morning the video had been reshared around 4,000 times. His small event was already sold out. "And now I have a business to run," Akkaoui says.

The concept is straightforward: you don't pitch yourself, someone who knows you very well does it for you. Each person has between five and seven minutes, with their friend taking the stage and using a presentation on the screen to make their case. Akkaoui keeps things moving as the event's hype man, asking a few questions at the end to help the room get to know the person being pitched.

The pitches have been anything but predictable. "Not one pitch has been the same," Akkaoui says.

One friend pulled out WhatsApp messages to demonstrate just how communicative their friend was, including how often they used "lol" and how quickly they replied. Another created AI-generated videos showing their friend at work and in their personal life. Someone else broke down their friend's love languages.

Then there was the friend who simply came prepared with jokes about what you should feed her, what you absolutely shouldn't ask her and how to stay on her good side.

That's part of the fun, and it also gets at the bigger idea behind the event. For Akkaoui, the person doing the pitching is almost as revealing as the person being pitched. "You can tell a lot about a person by the people they surround themselves with," he says.

Unlike an app, where you might spend an evening swiping through carefully selected photos and a three-line bio, Pitch Them Perfect gives you an actual person standing in front of you, telling you about someone they genuinely care about.

The pitch is only one part of the experience.

When attendees arrive, whether they are being pitched, doing the pitching or simply watching, they are handed cards and asked to write down their worst-ever first-date story. After the pitches, Akkaoui brings the cards back out and reads them to the room, turning a collection of dating disasters into an interactive segment that usually gets everyone talking.

One story becomes a laugh, another becomes a "wait, that happened to you?" moment, and suddenly people who came in as strangers have something to talk about.

Then the music starts. Depending on the venue, that might mean live music or Akkaoui getting behind the decks. The pitches are over, the cards have been read and there's nothing left to do but go up to someone, say hello and see where the night takes you.

With Pitch Them Perfect there is no algorithm to tell you who to talk to. No percentage match. No carefully engineered opening line. Just people. And occasionally those introductions may very well turn into dates.

Akkaoui says attendees from previous editions have exchanged numbers, made plans to meet up and even contacted the organisers afterwards to ask for another person's Instagram handle. But the team isn't measuring success by how many couples eventually come out of the event.

"If someone leaves having met 10 people they would never have crossed paths with otherwise, that's a win in our eyes," he says.

That idea of creating connections is becoming increasingly central to what Pitch Them Perfect is trying to build. The main pitching event remains its hero event, but Akkaoui and his team are also exploring comedy nights, fitness events, food and cooking experiences, different ways of bringing people together without making every interaction feel like a matchmaking exercise.

For Akkaoui, the idea is to build an ecosystem around connection, creating different spaces and experiences where people can meet naturally, whether they are looking for a date or simply looking to expand their circle.

At its core, the goal is to make the two hours people give out of their day count, and to create spaces where they can show up, have a good time and actually talk to one another.

That also explains why he gets involved in the details. Lighting, microphones, screen positioning and even how often waiters move around the room are all considered part of the experience.

"These people are giving us two hours of their time," he says. "And that's a lot of time when you think of it."

You can come to get pitched. You can come to pitch your friend. And if you're on the fence about giving it a go, you can simply come alone and watch the evening unfold.

"Worst case, you spend an evening laughing with your friends and meeting interesting people," Akkaoui says. And if you happen to meet someone along the way, even better.

Akkaoui is clearly having fun with the whole thing too. "We're really looking forward to see where this goes and how many people we'll meet along the way. And, most importantly, how many weddings we end up getting invited to. I expect to be invited to some."

With their eyes set on future editions, Akkaoui gave SceneNow UAE the inside scoop on what to expect this month. Pitch Them Perfect Presents: Confessions is planned for 15 August, bringing together comedians and the event's dating-confession cards for an interactive comedy night full of unorthodox dating advice. The full Pitch Them Perfect experience, including the friend-led pitches, returns later this month on 29 August.

So if your dating life could use a little help, or your life could simply use a little more fun, perhaps it's time to let your friends do the talking. They've probably been waiting for the opportunity longer than you'd think.