It’s always a good week when we get the pleasure of having a dinner at NatWest’s private dining room at Drummonds overlooking Trafalgar Square. Guests joined Alex Wood, Editor-in-Chief at The Memo (ex Tech City News) whilst we had Yoni Assia the founder of social trading platform, eToro speaking at another dinner. Catch up here on what happened:
Dine with Alex Wood, Editor-in-Chief at The Memo
Reveling in the experience of dining in NatWest’s private dining room at Drummonds, Alex Wood spoke after dinner on how to secure online, print and broadcast coverage for your business. As a tech journalist, Alex spoke extensively about everything from the diverse nature of media and why someone would want coverage, to the state of the media. With The Guardian losing £39m a year and there being 6 tech PRs in London to every journalist, securing coverage for your business is a difficult road to walk down.
When a journalist says no, it doesn’t mean no. It means not right now.
Alex believes that all journalists are good people and their primary motivation is telling other peoples’ stories – so give them your trust. His last words of advice were:
Be yourself. Be honest. Say good things, say bad things, just say something.
In doing this, Alex explained, “you will be surprised at the support the press will give you in following your dreams.”
Dine with Yoni Assia, founder and CEO of social trading platform, eToro
Dinner at Pescatori on Tuesday evening had Yoni speaking openly about starting eToro and how it’s become a leading social investment network, in 140 countries, that can be described as Facebook meets Barclays. eToro allows people to invest in different markets, and invented ‘copy trading’ where every person becomes an investment manager, allowing you to follow them and copy people. Resulting in everyone building mini portfolios.
As Yoni has been addicted to trading capital from a young age and is also fascinated by technology, he naturally began asking questions, like: How do you create a new type of user experience in the world of finance? How can you attract millions of investors?
His biggest advice for founders embarking on a startup is that it doesn’t get any easier – the bigger the company, the bigger the crisis!
People say start-ups are a roller coaster at the beginning, but in truth it doesn’t stop!
Yoni closed the evening discussing the companies he admires, including Disney, Apple, Google and Facebook – companies that have vision, values and strategy. Those that are audacious and courageous enough to talk about the future.
Our speakers were joined by: Digital Score Ltd, Fidelity Worldwide Investment, PixelPin, iomart, Swapforex, MediaMath, ClearMacro, Ztudium, Above+Beyond, WorkLife, Like Minds, UK Study Centre, Kiwi Girl Limited, The Accountancy Cloud, AirDates App, The Partners, Google, Grist, MeetingRooms.com and Pavegen amongst others.
Special thanks go to our speakers Alex Wood and Yoni Assia and our partner NatWest.
Check out the upcoming TableCrowd dinners and see when you’ll be joining us for dinner.
