Now the dust has settled from our book launch and ‘Future of Tech’ event last week, we’ve been having a chat about some of the things we personally took away from the evening.
Firstly it’s been fantastic to hear all the feedback from those that attended, whether you’re a starting startup, established founder or a member of our thriving tech community everyone took something away from the event.
Here’s some wise, and not so wise, words from the tsf.tech team as we reflect on our first post covid event!
Don’t underestimate the role of face to face networking.
We know we’ve been limited to online events the last 18 months, and to an extent we’ve got used to them, but we all agreed you can’t beat getting back in a room with people that inspire us, drinking a warm beer (standard) and sharing your challenges or plans. The natural enthusiasm the startup community have to champion and support each other is amazing, summed up by Ian Brookes, ‘The book launch event showed me that spending time with like minded people is always worthwhile, you get inspiration and new connections to help move your startup forward, it’s definitely given me the appetite to do more face to face events in the future.’
Starting is often the hardest part.
We talked about it in the book, and on the night, the hardest part is just starting, Austin Booth, said, ‘I spoke to a few people who either have an idea, or a clear plan that they want to work for themselves but haven’t taken the next step. We’ve already had some good follow up chats with aspiring founders and hopefully given them some encouragement and practical steps to take and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they do next.’
We love watching founders grow and thrive, attending his first tsf.tech event was Rupert Rutledge, who captured this perfectly, “It was fantastic to meet face-to-face with so many founders (and potential founders!) and hear their diversity of ideas. I’m looking forward to building the tech to bring some of these to life.”
Trust and Tech.
It was a common theme on the night but building a network of people around you that you trust is invaluable. Many heads are always better than one, and you have to trust your team and your wider community. Aleksa Vukotic, advised to ‘focus on what you’re good at’ ‘we’re a brave community in Manchester and we take risks, but that’s made easier when you’ve got a trusted team and community around you. Looking around the room I realised how lucky we are to have so many wise and knowledgeable people who will share their time and expertise to benefit founders – use it!’
Leave your Unicorns at the door.
In case you didn’t realise, we’re pretty simple in our approach and language – as all the team at tsf.tech are shareholders we all meet and agree on, potential new projects and founders. The driver for us is whether we like, and think we can work with someone, and as Eric Carter, Head of Engineering says ‘you can leave your fancy buzzwords at the door. People can feel intimidated by all the fancy words and phrases that are trendy this month. Simple ideas and execution are often best with startups so if you’re all about Unicorns then you might be at the wrong event!’
You’ll always need more pizza and beer than you think.
With two emergency runs to Tesco (literally) and a Dominoes top up order of an extra seven large pizzas we’d forgotten how much pizza the tech community eat, thank goodness for speedy deliveries and no one was any wiser. And a note on the wine, people won’t drink Blossom Hill Rose, even if it’s free (Thanks to Rupert for that revelation!)
