Meetups, especially tech/ startup-themed ones, are an awesome way to connect with people. We've attended a fair few in our time (before and after we started Chew) and have always enjoyed the excuse of meeting up with old friends and making new ones.
A few weeks ago, during an Ignite session with Paul and Tristan up at Campus North, we floated the idea of hosting our own meetup during one of the accelerator trips to London. Everyone seemed keen on the idea, and we figured as an creative/ entertainment startup it'd make sense to run a meetup for similar startups. A few days of planning ensued and Startup Social Club was born...
After hunting around for a venue, we discovered Tileyard Studios. The 105,000 sq ft estate is next door to the booming King's Cross regeneration site and is home to some of the creative industry's top names - it's "very much the place to be for musicians, composers, writers, producers and artists". Having spent a bit of time on-site, we very much agree with that description. Definitely worth a visit if you haven't been!
Martyn and the Sendgrid team were our awesome sponsors - kindly helping us with the event.
If you haven't heard of Sendgrid, they're the world's largest 'Email Infrastructure as a Service' provider. Their email delivery service moves 2% of the world's non-spam email (over 14 billion emails/month) for more than 180,000 companies.
We really couldn't have done it without them, so huge, huge thanks to them!
We wanted to have a few speakers to keep things interesting.
Twitter UK's Helen Lawrence (@helenium) and Lewis Silkin/ Eleven's Cliff Fluet (@fflic) very kindly agreed to present - discussing the (intentionally broad) topic of 'engagement'. Helen's brilliant talk took us through innovation with Twitter data, while Cliff explained why engagement is the future of broadcaster content.
We had a fantastic turnout and saw both old and new faces. A huge thanks to our speakers, Sendgrid, everyone at Tileyard, anyone who helped - and everyone who braved the rather miserable weather to attend our first meetup. Your support means a lot!
If you're in London and free the evening of March 12th 2015, we'd love to see you at UsTwo's London studio for the second #startupsocialclub
A brilliant two days spent at the Tileyard studios with the incredible Quentin Collins and Max Cooper. We went into the studio with no plan, Quentin and i had free reign to improvise and throw down ideas. Speaking for myself, it was the perfect environment to explore our instruments and enjoy bouncing off each others ideas. In the words of my mentor Freddie Wilson, if it ain't fun you ain't doing it right.. and i have to say- this was as fun as it gets.
A huge thanks to Max and Quentin and Gearbox for running with this, it was a leap of faith and a great experiment..
Anyone else game??
Let me know..
The lyrics are taken from a poem i wrote- inspired by a few months out in LA, more on that and photos to come..
Caught in the city
of lost souls
With a mission inked to each arm
holding onto the cliffs
with no hint of fatalism,
no hint..
Do or die, hear them cry
do or die, hear them cry
Life's locomotion runs over them
over them
Life's locomotion runs over them
over them
Life's locomotion runs over them
over them
Life's locomotion runs over them
over them
Do or die, hear them cry
and they lie down like sleepers
lay down face down
life's locomotion
life's locomotion runs over them
i matter i do
do or die
my dreams tell me i do
