Last night we hosted TableCrowd’s Sharing Economy Startups “Meet & Eat” at Central Working in Google Campus. A ‘shared’ workspace seemed like the perfect place for this dinner to happen!

Each startup ‘shared’ their contacts and invited a journalist or blogger guest to join the dinner (the theme is sharing, in case you hadn’t noticed). We were joined by some of the most exciting startups in the space:

Drummond Gilbert from goCarShare joined us. goCarShare allows people to share car journeys. The passenger gets a ride to their destination, the driver earns some extra cash for taking them, and they both get to meet new people through taking the journey together.

We were also joined by Scott Collen from Sooqini – “the place to get things done”. You can list any job or task that you need doing, however big or small, together with how much you’d pay to get it done, and someone nearby can do that job or task for you.

Ben Pugh from FarmDrop joined the dinner. FarmDrop connects producers with local customers and allows them to purchase goods directly. Their mission is to create a more sustainable food system.

Madeline Ito was representing onefinestay. Their platform allows guests to stay in someone else’s house whilst the owner is out of town. It’s as easy to book as a hotel, but it has a level of service over and above a hotel, including recommendations, which allows the guest to feel less like a tourist during their stay in that city.

It was nice to see Warren Heal from RentMyItems, a platform which allows users to make extra cash from renting unused household items, or conversely rent, rather than buy, an item they need to use.

Moray Coulter from We Can Go Dutch joined us. They offer a free crowd-funding service, which allows users to share the cost of an event with friends or with a group of like-minded people.

Sarah Hughes’ project is Fiz. It’s a free service that helps users make the most of their precious leisure time by helping them find places to visit that match their leisure needs, nearby or anywhere in the world.

Sarah Henderson joined us from Echo (Economy of hours). Echo provides a new spin on business, by trading in time and skills rather than cash. Hour for hour, you can give your skills in return for someone else’s.

Last but not least, we were joined by Logan Hall from Movebubble. For owners, renters and traders, Movebubble is a community marketplace where they can advertise, find and maintain homes easily.

We were also joined by some really interesting journalists and bloggers, including, amongst others, TechCityNews, TechCityInsider, The Wall, Clarity PR, Channel 4, Bootstrapped PR & Evening Standard.

Central Working really looked after us! Welcome drinks! Table football! We then dined on rolled chicken valentine stuffed with slow roasted tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, wrapped in parma ham, with potato dauphinaise and Autumn greens. They were even unfazed when a certain person attempted (by mistake) to steal one of the tester phone handsets. Naming no names 🙂

Thanks to everyone that was part of the dinner, it was great to ‘share’ a meal with you, and thank you to artwork sponsors, nerv, for their continued support with our “Meet & Eat” dinners.

The next dinner in the series is for travel startups on the 19th November. Please get in touch if you would like to attend at hello@tablecrowd.com or @tablecrowd

You can read about our previous ‘Meet & Eat’ dinners here.

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