About Gathr

I started Gathr, formally London Tech Drinks, on the 22nd Jan 2022 with the desire to bring together a group of like minded people who didn’t know each other but who were involved in the tech industry to connect. I had personally struggled with severe anxiety for a lot of my life, however, I had always been a huge believer in community and had an entrepreneurial nature, so I always felt heavily conflicted. Do I put myself out there, see what happens and risk the unknown - allowing myself to see if I can indeed build something, but at the same time making myself more anxious, or do I stay “in my lane” and continue living how I am. After much debate (and therapy) I chose the former, and I am so glad I did, as today my life would have not been the same without this moment.

Despite being incredibly nervous and worried that I would post the initial invite below and no one would respond, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. After posting the original post, the response was beyond any of my expectations with 31 signing up to the mailing list in the 1st hour and 100 in the first 24 hours! This certainly set us on a path, I never quite expected. 

I now had a new problem…people actually wanted to meet up and now we had over 300 people on the mailing list. The first event became full in 17 mins and I had to find a location now! Our first event was the 23rd Feb 2022, at the Square Pig in Holborn! It was very simple, come along, buy yourself a drink and meet like minded people.

The event was a huge success! Lots of people turned up and had a great time and this was the start of many more to come. It also helped proved to myself, quite often your biggest fears don’t actually come true. 

Fast forward a couple of months and the momentum keeped picking up. By May 2022, the community had now passed over 1,000 people and the sign-ups just kept getting quicker and quicker. There was a clear demand from the community, an incredible buzz and so many people came together each month, it felt like the start of a real community. At this time I was a full-time VC, so there was a slightly event lull in the summer, while I led a $15m Series B round. 

After the round had closed and I had a bit more time, I decided to keep pushing on the event side. Up until this point, the events had been for everyone together with Founders, VCs, Operators and Service Providers all together. We decided we had grown to enough people and had enough demand that we would split out the events, and therefore started with the launch of the VC only & Founder & Operator only events. These were a huge hit! It was also a really important turning point for us, underlining the “community” ethos we wanted to build and not the “transactional nature” of some events. By separating the different stakeholders, people didn’t come here just to transact, they came and kept coming, as they wanted to be part of a genuine community. 

 London Tech Drinks was doing really well, and I decided it was time to launch London PE Drinks, which was the same format, but instead of the tech industry would being together the Private Equity community. The first event was a hit and then shortly after we posted on Linkedin and went viral with nearly 1,500 likes! Turns out, the Private Equity Community was very ready for their own event!

In May 2023, I had decided it was time to hang up my hat as a VC and move full time to follow my dreams and see what I could build London Tech Drinks into! Gathr Tech Ltd was incorporated on the 23rd May 2023 and this was the start of the full time move into building and scaling London Tech Drinks!

When you start a business you never know quite what to expect and the highs and lows are certainly both extremes compared to my experience in a day to day job. One of these incredibly high moments, was my visit to No.10 to talk about London Tech Drinks and London PE Drinks!

As time went by, we kept scaling and building the community, which today stands at c.9,000 people. January was also a special time as we started building our new product Gathr to Find, our highly curated B2B services & software marketplace, which aims to effectively become the flagship of the tech services and software world. 

Gathr was finally released into the world in May 2024 with its three core products
‍1) Gathr to Connect
2) Gathr to Learn
3) Gathr to Find

Gathr to Find has been launched with 130+ leading firms. Check it out at www.gathrtofind.com

We can’t wait to see what the future unholds! A huge thanks to everyone who has been part of our journey to date and a huge welcome to anyone new!