Meet the Meetup: South West Founders

The Bristol and Bath tech cluster has more meetups per head than any technology cluster in the UK – we believe it’s that connectedness, that support and that level of knowledge-sharing that drives innovation, and makes our region the best place to work in tech. So we’ve decided to highlight the awesome groups keeping us connected.

This week we’re running our questions past South West Founders.

1. What’s your Meet-up?

South West Founders!

2. Who’s it for?

SWF is for entrepreneurs who have been, are, or want to be setting up a tech business in the South West. We’re about connecting together like-minded people so they can share their successes and challenges on their startup journey.

We also have guest speakers along to discuss relevant topics and share their knowledge.

3. Is there any criteria to join?

Our focus is on scalable and disruptive tech businesses.

We welcome entrepreneurs and tech investors with open arms but discourage freelancers, consultants, lawyers and other service providers unless they have a genuine interest in founding or mentoring start-up businesses. We have a strict ‘no selling’ rule at our events.

4. What’s the format of your event?

We’re hosted by the great people at Framework every month. We have a mix of networking over beers (and pizza!) followed by a short talk from an experienced entrepreneur or investor about a useful subject.

5. If you could invite anyone to your meet-up who would it be?

There’s nobody specific really, just a person that can add value to the community. It would be great to hear from some of the Bristol and Bath-based success stories from recent years, scaleup founders or CEO’s who can share knowledge of their journey in our rapidly expanding scene.

6. How many members do you generally have at an event?

We have over 1500 members but each event will be for between 50 to 70 attendees normally.

7. What are some of the typical subjects you discuss?

We discuss lots of things about the start-up journey! Some people come and tell us their story or we have people share learning about things like business development, leadership, investment and growth.

8. Who’s been your favourite speaker this year and why?

We’ve had so many great talks this year, Nick Sturge recently walked us through the dos and don’ts of building a board.

It was also brilliant to hear from Andy Mulvenna about his journey founding Bright Pearl, some of what he looks for now as an investor and what he wants to do building an entrepreneurial community in ICE.

9. What’s the best thing about the Bristol & Bath tech cluster?

The such an enormous range of businesses across a huge breadth of tech from hardware and deep tech right through to creative. It also feels like there’s a real community here which means it’s pretty easy to meet people and have a conversation.