With a total of five dinners spread across three days, this has certainly been a jam-packed week here at TableCrowd. We’ve split our roundup into two separate posts (find the other one here) because we’ve got so much to fill you in on! From the beautiful arches of the Royal Exchange on Monday for our dinner for London FoodTech Week, to Aubaine Mayfair on Tuesday with our PropertyTech dinner, to The Avenue, Pall Mall on Wednesday for our beauty bloggers dinner, we’ve been all over the capital dining and networking with like-minded folk. Read on to hear our highlights…
London FoodTech Week – Successfully funding your food business
As part of London FoodTech Week, we hosted a dinner at the sumptuous surroundings of the Royal Exchange in Bank where we were joined by a panel of speakers: Michael Wilkinson, Head of Equity Investments at Crowdcube, Ben Pugh, founder at FarmDrop and Oliver Pugh, founder and CEO at EarlyBird who successfully funded their businesses using CrowdCube. Ben and Oliver having both gone through the CrowdCube process, shared their experience using this fundraising platform:
There are no silver bullets; just work damn hard
The panel advised potential CrowdCube companies to be sensible and realistic about valuation and ultimately:
Be scrappy or go home.
The future of mobile marketing with Oisin Lunny
Also on Monday night, we were over at The Green in Clerkenwell to discuss the future of mobile marketing with Oisin Lunny. With technology changing as quickly as it is, mobile marketing is becoming more important than ever. As Oisin outlined, we are embracing mobile use wholeheartedly – it is the fastest growing market. 73% of world’s population now have a mobile phone. There are more active mobile connections than people. More people have access to a mobile phone than to a toothbrush. 6 billion people worldwide use mobile messaging, so as you can see: it’s kind of a big deal. Oisin quoted The Economist’s take on the situation:
We are now a planet of smart phones populated by homo sapiens.
From 1990 onwards, we saw the The Age of Information take place, and recently, we have seen the dawn of The Age of the Consumer. There are 3 things on the mobile market mind at the moment:
- ‘CEx’ – the ability to transform customer experience
- Turning Big Data into data insights
- Becoming a digital disrupter
The best examples of companies who are leveraging the mobile successfully are those such as Uber, who are proactively serving consumers based on their context. Apple Pay, in addition, is a good example of a completely closed system.
We are tech-rich and time-poor.
We have a personal relationship with our phones and because of this companies are trying different ways to getting through to people through local advertising. For example, Google, promote local suggestions and thereby add value to the home consumer through the crossover between functionality and marketing.
Property tech dinner with Eyal Malinger
We were talking about property at dinner on Tuesday night at Aubaine, and we were lucky enough to be joined by CountryWide‘s Eyal Malinger. Eyal is responsible for Countrywide’s growth and venture investments. He spoke a bit about the challenges of getting seen by a big corporate.
It’s hard because these companies are so opaque.
He advised to use websites such as LinkedIn to connect with investors from large corporate companies. People are on these sites, he says, because they want to be responded to! Eyal advised what he callsl ‘the side door method’. Instead of approaching the person right at the top, go sideways. Send a brief email (this should be one screen…don’t forget that people tend to read emails on their phone!) and ask who that person would recommend that you talk to in that company.
Eyal also gave his advice on approaching VCs by talking a bit about his experience on the receiving end from start-ups. For further information on this topic, check out Eyal’s post here.
Our speakers were joined by: Popcorn Kitchen, FarmDrop, Born Social, EarlyBird, CrowdCube, Gozo Deli, iguacu, OpenMarket, BlisMedia, MoveBubble, BillHub, i Am the agent, CarSpring, Bungaloow and Valimpex amongst others.
Special thanks to our speakers, Oisin, Michael, Ben, Oliver and Eyal for all their great advice and tips, and to our partners, Alma CG and FixFlo.
For the #AfterDinnerRoundup for the rest of dinners this week, check out our post here.
