Report on Techcelerate Coffees London #1

Joan Lockwood, Stewart Townsend and I hosted our first ever Techcelerate Coffees London (TCLDN) meetup on 6th November 2018 at White Collar Factory of London. It was attended by seasoned tech entrepreneurs to newbies. Even a family office dropped in.

 

Mini Reunion

TCLDN provided the ideal opportunity for some of my old fellow tech entrepreneurs to meet. Among them was Sam Sethi who twisted my arm in 2006 to start Northern Startup 2.0 which eventually became Techcelerate. Here’s a brief update on them:

• Sam Sethi – involved in multiple initiatives from running a radio talk show to importing wine.
• Richard Edwards – still runs DataShaka in addition to a lucrative stealth project.
• Andrew Gerrard – arrange investment for Israeli tech startups.
• Charlie Cox – Advises on Blockchain.
• Raj Anand – runs a leadgen startup in addition to producing market research for brands.
• Katie Lips – working on a new cybersecurity startup.
• David Terrar – helps companies with their digital transformation strategies.

 

 

Conversation Flow

As this was the first event, most of my conversations focused on catching up with old friends. Whilst the event series is opened to anyone, we were lucky to attract a Family Office who has invested into emoov which is currently attracting a lot of media attention. It was a great opportunity to chat and understand the type of business they are interested in backing.

Chris Hansen has founded BuyAnyPart with the intention of encouraging us to repair equipment instead of throwing them out for recycling or landfill. He wants to bring everything together to stop on-going wastage and reduce manmade environmental damage. Steve Padmore has been beating the investor community to get his mammoth project off the grounds for seven years. According to Steve,

You could think of BIGCrowd as a crowdsourcing and crowd funding multi sided platform, an ecosystem where people can earn and learn, and a way of funding and supporting the best applicants to open calls and incentive competitions held all over the world

Boys (Matt Ward and Kieran Singleton) from Forge are building a Freelancer Market Place for automotive designers. I had the privilege to spent sometime with them before appreciating the innovation they are bringing to the market.

Not to be outdone, the event featured not one but three Sri Lankans. It was good to finally meet Deen Najimudeen and Sam Wellalage. Sam ended up becoming a co-sponsor of our weekly deal news for 4 weeks from 19th November.

 

How the day paned out

Some of the attendees continued to network way past 12 pm. At the end, some of us met for evening drinks and a bite to eat. Going forward, we are thinking of organising two events when we are in London to make it easy for engagement with us:

1. Techcelerate Coffees London #TCLDN as before from 10 to 12pm.
2. Techcelerate Drinks London #TDLDN – a new concept by us from 5:30 to 8pm.

The next event would most likely be on 29th January. Watch the space for further event details. If you like us to notify when the event page is ready, please leave a note below.

 

Resources:

• Report on Techcelerate Coffees Manchester #6
• Event Report on Techcelerate Coffees #5
• Event Report on Techcelerate Coffees #4
• Report on Techcelerate Coffees #3
• Launching Techcelerate Coffees on 15th May #TechcelerateCoffees