Blog: Tech Dragons and Alacrity Foundation join forces

Wednesday 15th of November saw a great evening of learning as a result of a new collaboration event with Tech Dragons, writes Ryan Hiscott.

Alacrity’s Guy Wendon worked alongside Nicholas Fearn, founder of Tech Dragons, to set up the eighth event of the TD Meetup series. With thanks to Mark John for hosting us at the fantastic Tramshed Tech, we were ready to go.

We invited a wide selection of guests, including university students from partner universities Cardiff and Swansea, members of the Tech Dragons community, and graduates from the Alacrity network.

Nicholas Fearn opened the evening alongside Alacrity CEO Wil Williams, welcoming the guests and offering thanks to those that had worked towards making the event happen.

Shortly after, Enjovia managing director Sam Gibson started the evening’s talks by offering his perspective on life as a entrepreneur. He gave us a brief insight into the work that Enjovia does before expanding on how his experiences within the entrepreneur circle of life have helped shape his decisions and understanding of how to succeed.

He explained that a vital part of the success cycle is searching on a regular basis for things such as new customers or features that will improve your services. It was an overall eye-opening presentation which concluded with a strong final sentiment:

Your effort is directly proportional to your success.

Why work to make someone else rich and successful?

With a good topic for discussion over food, pizza arrived in a timely manner offering an opportunity for guests to network further before reconvening to listen to the evening’s next speaker, Craig Barnett of Culturvate.

Craig, director of sales and distribution, spoke about employee engagement and how satisfied employees make a difference in the workplace. Culturvate, one of the more recent graduates of the foundation, received its investment fund back in October.

The company produces two products: Teamphoria, a social platform aimed to increase employee engagement, as well as a recently launched innovation platform. The latter is designed to encourage collaboration on new and developing business solutions.

He highlighted how both platforms are designed primarily to improve employee engagement, with the latest workforce’s largest group being millennials. Barnett concluded his talk with the help of one of his influencers, Richard Branson. He offered the following sentiments:

Clients do not come first.

Employees come first.

If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.

Alacrity’s very own business leads, Peter Allan and Robert Van Den Bergh, concluded the evening’s presentations. They explained how their early experiences of the initial bootcamp gave them room to grow their technical knowledge as well as a platform to develop relationships with potential colleagues prior to forming their teams.

Following the bootcamp, they explored a collection of potential projects by working alongside Alacrity’s strategic partners to develop ideas from a variety of industries.

Business lead Robert went on to discuss the value of data, how companies in the US are making larger volumes of data available to the public, and how this could potentially be a good market to move into.

He also discussed development in 5G technology, explaining how the current 4G network is no longer able to keep up with the supply or the demand of connected devices.

The evening finished on high with a final round of applause for all. We moved to Tiny Rebel’s Urban Tap House on Womanby Street to conclude the night.

Overall, a successful outing for the Foundation with both ourselves and the Tech Dragons society bringing technology into the capital’s spotlight.