At the start of the year, TableCrowd won the Lion’s Cage pitch competition. As well as the general prestige of winning this event, we won a very generous £5k in legal fees from event sponsor Taylor Wessing.

Since then we have partnered with Taylor Wessing on a number events, particularly for our startup community; an area close their hearts, as they have a team of lawyers dedicated to supporting start ups.

In May, Declan Bradley joined us for a dinner themed around employment law. Over pizza and beers at Pizza East, Declan helped with questions ranging from how to set yourself up when you start working for yourself, to employing people as your project grows – and everything else that was thrown at him! Here’s what Declan had to say about the dinner:

“People only seem to want to meet an employment lawyer when there’s trouble afoot, but throw in some pizzas, beers and TableCrowd’s treasure trove of contacts…and things can certainly change! I met up in Pizza East with a table full of guys in one way or another involved in startups as part of Tablecrowd’s “The Startup Engine”, so that I could hopefully impart some useful legal tips to the hungry entrepreneurs and their growing businesses. Over a few cold Peronis and Pepperoni thin crusts the conversation flowed about topics as diverse as the marvel of 3D printing to the finer points of running a fashion app business. With our bellies brimming with food and our heads full of knowledge we trotted off in to the Shoreditch night and I’ve been in touch with almost everyone since. Happy days!”

Philip Shepherd and Kristy Hibberd joined us at Central Working at Google Campus in May for TableCrowd’s Food Startups “Meet & Eat”. It was the first in the series of industry startup dinners where all the attending startups invited a member of the tech or food press, or a tech or food blogger to join as their guest. After the success of this dinner, we hosted TableCrowd and SilkFred’s Fashion Startups ‘Meet & Eat’ earlier this month – same format, same great line up startups and same level of success. Here’s what Kristy had to say about the dinner:

“My first TableCrowd event was a real experience and I came a way from it being invigorated and inspired by the fantastic and passionate people I met. It was a great (and relaxed) opportunity to network with a whole host of people from journalists to food start-ups. For me the highlights were hearing peoples’ stories, how they got there and the challenges they are facing. The other added benefit was that everyone had at least one thing in common – food – so we all got on really well and made useful contacts. Not to mention our host and the food, which perfected the evening.”

Earlier this month, Daniel Rooke, a corporate lawyer at Taylor Wessing was on hand at dinner at Thai Thai to help with questions ranging from how to start your company, to protecting yourself when issuing equity to co-founders, from EIS & SEIS to articles of association – and everything in between.

Tomorrow evening (20th August) Neil McKnight a tax associate from Taylor Wessing is joining us for dinner, so if you want to know more about tax, EIS, SEIS and more, get involved here.