We’ve had a busy month with social dining at TableCrowd for our startup community. The Crowd is growing week on week and its members are enjoying more and more dinners in and around Tech City. The Startup Engine now has over 600 members.

Recently our members dined at Red Dog Saloon with Benjamin Southworth, now ex-deputy CEO at The Tech City Investment Organisation (TCIO). TCIO was established by UKTI to support the growth of the tech cluster in East London, which includes supporting and helping budding entrepreneurs. Benjamin has helped companies set up in the area and grow internationally, making introductions to VCs / investors, facilitating mentoring and assisting with business scaling and development. It was really interesting to meet him and we’re looking forward to hearing what he does next as he re enters the scene as an entrepreneur.

Earlier in the month, Itxaso del Palacio joined us at Fire & Stone. As well as being an academic entrepreneur, teaching Entrepreneurial Finance at UCL and an entrepreneur, co-founding Founders Fit, she is also an Investment Analyst at EC1 Capital, investing between £50 and £200K in great teams building startups in big markets. Everyone was inspired by how much one lady can do with her time.

Sasha Serafimovski of Hybird Partners hosted a dinner at Red Dog Saloon. Hybird Partners are advisors, mentors and investors in game-changing projects, people and companies. They work with early stage technology opportunities including startups. They were on hand to provide feedback and hear what everyone was working on.

Tech City News launched their Supper Club series in partnership with Penguin Books and partnered with TableCrowd to sell tickets for the dinner. This meant Startup Engine members, as well as Tech City News readers, grabbed seats for the dinner at private members’ club, Eight.

The first supper club provided an exclusive chance to meet one of Silicon Valley’s most respected experts on Elevator Pitches. Terri Sjoden is the world’s leading expert on Elevator Pitches. She’s based in Newport Beach, California. Over the course of dinner Terri gave her top tips for delivering better pitches and business presentations and was on hand for one to one advice.

Kate Jackson from TableCrowd attended the supper club and said:

“The supper club was hosted in a beautiful room at Eight. In addition to the fantastic presentation and tips from Terri and the complimentary copy of her book, it was really interesting to meet the other entrepreneurs that were dining – a truly international crowd. I’m looking forward to the next supper club in the series”

Click here to see what’s lined for The Startup Engine in the coming weeks and book your seat!