We’re looking forward to seeing Prash tomorrow night at the travel dinner with the head of the travel at Facebook Lee McCabe as after dinner speaker. It’ll be a lively one and we’re excited to hear new insights, make interesting connections and enjoy good food & wine. We caught up with Prash ahead of the dinner to find out a bit more about his travel startup Localoids. Over to you:

What’s the elevator pitch for your startup?

Localoids is an international community with a simple aim: we want to help each other with anything we can, whether we’re travelling or at home. It could be local advice or experiences, language practice, skills and knowledge or hospitality. We want to create international friendships and, ultimately, a helpful global neighbourhood.

What were you doing before you launched your startup?

I worked as a wealth manager for over 10 years, but I’m now free of the corporate noose.

What’s your biggest ‘hindsight’ moment?

In hindsight I would not have wasted several months negotiating with potential tech founders, only to be let down. I would have started building straight away with freelancers, as I’m doing now.

What will 2015 bring?

We’re very excited at Localoids and hope to get the business and social model working really well, before expanding across Europe and eventually, around the globe.

1 piece of advice for someone starting a business in the the sector?

Don’t waste time trying to find a tech co-founder. Try to prove the business model with research and customer development, then hire freelancers to build it. Once you have something tangible, you’ve got a much better chance of finding people to join you. By the way, I’m still building.

Convince someone to use your product/service in under 50 words.

If you love meeting interesting people, learning new things and helping others out, you’re a Localoid. We connect like-minded Travellers and Locals for fun, adventure and understanding. Join our growing tribe and help bring the world a little bit closer together. What are you waiting for?

How would you describe TableCrowd to someone who’s never heard of it before?

TableCrowd is a platform that connects people around interesting topics, to chat over a nice meal. It brings together like-minded people for networking and lively discussion. Once you sign up on the website you can join a table or create one of your own, based around whatever you want. Others can join and voila, you have a dinner party with interesting friends you haven’t met yet!

Connect with Prash and Localoids

Thanks Prash and wishing you all the best with Localoids! See you at the dinner table soon.