Last week was a busy week, we had seven TableCrowd dinners happening across a variety of sectors, including WedTech, playing the stock market, Food & Beverage industry, PropertyTech and more. Here’s the rundown of what nuggets of wisdom our speakers imparted on their fellow diners: WedTech at Aubaine, Heddon St
We held an intimate dinner for those in the wedding industry with our co-host Sachin, Founder of Think Shaadi, discussing how technology is impacting the £10 billion UK wedding industry. Following the usual round-the-table introductions the diners chatted en mass about wedding trends and how to work together in such a big industry. With tech being a relatively new thing in the UK wedding industry, it was agreed by all that a lot of venues, dressmakers, and photographers are still using basic technology and definitely need to catch up! For the wedding industry, the most useful marketing tools are still word of mouth, with everyone stressing the importance of customer reviews.

Urban Food Fest at Piccolino, Exchange Square
Both Mike and Jessica joined us from Urban Food Fest to discuss the London street food scene and how it has revolutionised the way London eats! Founded two years ago, Urban Food Fest is a street food market based in Shoreditch occurring every Saturday. Around 15 food stalls – including a V corner for vegans and vegetarians – are surrounded by lots of bars and live music to entertain and delight the crowds that attend. Starting with a pop up status, their festival is now a regular event and they have expanded into corporate and private events including one for Henry Cavell, Apple and Volkswagen.

Ultimately, the team at Urban Food Fest love being a platform for so many diverse people who want to share their passion for food. For our diners, Mike’s top tips all related to networking and how it is crucial to success.

Business is person to person. Get over any inhibitions about talking to people and get out there and just do it!

You’ll never know where the conversations might lead. So, remember – always bring your business cards with you, be prepared and be passionate!

How to charm the Fashion Press
Diners were in for a treat at our Fashion Press dinner as they had two speakers, Alison Levy, Global Director of Brand Development at Fashion GPS and Tansy Aspinall, co-founder of Tada & Toy. The great thing about this dinner, apart from the amazing food at Mint Leaf Lounge, was the opportunity to garner insight into the accessibility of fashion magazines from both a PR and brand perspective. Both ladies had such insightful and worthwhile information, that we have a whole separate post dedicated to their top tips. Take a look at it here.

Tony Wollenberg on playing the stock market
Last Tuesday saw a group of diners joining serial entrepreneur and stock market guru, Tony Wollenberg for dinner at Aubaine where his market successes and failures were discussed over food. Tony had some great advice for those interested in playing the stock market which identified that whatever you’re doing in the markets, it certainly won’t be a boring journey up, or down. His honest depiction of crashes in the stock market led him to describe them as “cataclysmic, seismic events” that are “the times when you can make the most money.”

You can be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy.

Dinner with Luciana Lixandru, Accel Partners
The private dining room at Jamie’s Italian in Piccadilly was the backdrop for our fundraising dinner with Luciana Lixandru, Vice President and an early stage investor at Accel. Providing a brief history of the company, Luciana explained that Accel was built in Silicon Valley 30 years ago, and in Europe they invest $0.5 billion dollars. This is usually invested in early stage to growth businesses, and the sweet spot is often around £10 million for the initial investment. Accel’s ‘Claim to Fame’ is that they were the first to invest in Facebook!

Luciana’s top tip was:

Be straightforward and make it easy for VCs to understand you

PropertyTech
A vibrant evening with lots of lovely guests was the feedback from our host with regards to our Property Tech dinner with Ed Freyfogle, in partnership with Wellers and our co-host Fixflo. Ed shared the story of Lokku, including lessons he learnt whilst at Yahoo about getting annihilated by Google, analysing Yahoo’s site and realising how cluttered it was. He stressed the importance of making sure you understand the value chain of your piece of the business.

His top tips were:

• Keep your endurance and stick with it
• Control the things you can control, don’t spend too much time worrying about the things you can’t
• The better you do at serving the consumer, the more money you make
• As you go on your journey, don’t forget to enjoy it

Click here for all the tips provided by Sarah Jossel at the ‘Getting into the Glossys’ dinner.

A big thanks goes to our speakers Mike, Alison, Tansy, Tony, Ed and Luciana, and our partners Fixflo, Wellers, Taylor Wessing and SilkFred.

For a full list of our upcoming dinners, click here.