My First Experience With TableCrowd

Background

• TableCrowd invites you to dine with successful people from a variety of industries
• I have known of TableCrowd since April 2017 when I booked the Founder to speak at my entrepreneurial event at Hult Business School
• This is my first experience at one of their dinners and it took place last night in London

I arrived at a place brimming with drinkers outside enjoying the London heatwave and felt underwhelmed as this was not what I had in mind for a professional meetup. Luckily, I was at the wrong place. A few hundred yards south, I landed at the correct venue and was greeted by a charming young lady who poured me a drink, introduced me to the bar tender (a fortuitous connection in any networking event) and comfortably set me on my way to meandering into meetings with my fellow diners. The transition from arrival to engagement was smoother than any other networking event I had been to, somehow the proverbial ice melted as quick as the real ice in my glass on this sweltering summer evening.

Conversations ensued and the general nature of the chatter was productive, well-natured and bereft of any social friction as there were no cliques and one could navigate between people seamlessly. In other similar events, it is common to see small clusters of people forming impenetrable groups but that wasn’t the case here. The main event, as it were, was the speaker Hussein Kanji who not only mingled happily with us at the beginning, he was incredibly laid-back, friendly and open to any questions. All in all, the vibe was a tranquil one but with real underlying tones of purpose and productivity.

Starters arrived after everybody stood up and introduced themselves in 60 seconds, to give you a chance to pinpoint a potential target in the room. It also saved time as we could sit and enjoy conversation without the often unfruitful ceremony of asking what the other person does. The table was adorned with plates which were accompanied by little place-cards with our names on them and hand-drawn on these cards were images and logos which only a thorough researcher could have ascertained knowledge of – a wonderful touch and something which stuck with me.

The other key ingredient to a networking event is quality of personnel. The calibre here was second-to-none because everybody was impressive, driven, decision makers who knew what they wanted and there was a notable absence of wishy-washy ambiguity. Everybody in attendance had their business-head firmly screwed on and this is no accident; the stature of TableCrowd attracts a certain audience through its presentation. In truth, before I arrived I was slightly apprehensive because I kept receiving notifications about new people signing up for the dinner.

Originally, I thought I was signing up for an intimate setting with the speaker so he could get to know you and vice versa; as more people registered I began wondering if I was heading to a concert. My scepticism grew as I foresaw a free-for-all, a rabble of hungry entrepreneurs all fighting for attention causing the actual value of the occasion to plummet. However, thankfully, nothing could have been further from the truth – it was intimate, it was high value and incredibly enjoyable to attend, completely lacking in any strenuous socialising or laborious liaising. TableCrowd have really cracked it and this will be the first of many events for me!