Chico Bandito on Luke Street is fast becoming the weekly home of The Startup Engine. Why? I’m a fan of the large square table that allows one conversation even when there are 10 diners, the jugs of cocktails and the tasty-not-too-expensive food. And, tonight our waitress treated us to tequila shots on the house, which received varying receptions from diners considering it was a Tuesday night, but a lovely touch that made us feel special.

Iggy Hammick joined us again. Iggy is a freelance web designer and is also the London organiser of Digital Dumbo. It was good to hear about his upcoming event on 22nd August at Open Kitchen, 40 Hoxton Street. They have partnered with the Tech City Apprentice Scheme, which helps connect young people in East London with top local tech businesses. Date saved! Details here:

It was lovely to see Rachel Cheal back again for her second TableCrowd dinner. Rachel is founder of The Growth Lab, a new kind of financial consultancy, which gives small and medium sized businesses the strategic and financial foundations they need to grow. She uses her wealth of experience to work closely with businesses to provide the CFO services they need, but can’t necessarily have in-house in their earlier years.

Oli Ashness joined his first dinner and came bearing gifts! His startup, SimplyCook provides by-post recipe kits to help people cook great food at home in minutes. They provide the taste elements and you add the fresh ingredients. I have the Cajun chicken kit ready for the weekend. I’ll report back!

Jonathon Lea was back again after many many months. We first met at an Escape The City dinner, when he was days away from starting The Jonathan Lea Network, an international business content platform and community. He continues to provide legal services to clients whilst also providing a wealth of content on not only law, but general business, finance, marketing and political information and commentary. I’m looking forward to Jonathon hosting a dinner for The Startup Engine in the next few months and sharing some of his knowledge!

A pleasure to meet first timer, Ripul Agarwal, who’s working hard on his startup, S(u)ave, which is due to launch later this year. It is a tool for the education sector that will enable the collation of research content in a simple yet effective manner. Looking forward to finding out more and seeing it live!

As always, a really interesting evening and pleasure to have dinner with such a great bunch of entrepreneurs and founders.

Next week’s social dining experience is in partnership with Taylor Wessing and we will be dining with a tax associate who can give us the low down on all things tax including EIS & SEIS. You can get involved here.