Three bearded men roam the Old Street roundabout. These are not your average East London hipsters; they are the leaders of the startup community.
From the inception of the Digital Sizzle in 2011, a networking BBQ where startups unite, to their takeover of the Silicon Drinkabout, the past two years have been jam packed for Michael Hobson, Bryce Keen and Joe Scarboro, dubbed the Three Beards.
The roundabout is synonymous with the UK’s tech scene and in June 2012, David Cameron revealed plans to spend £50m on its regeneration.
Yet Lee Spinks, the founder of Islington Forum, an online space for interaction between startups, recalls a time when London’s business landscape was altogether different.
“There was nothing for small businesses who wanted to have a drink and get to know each other. There was definitely a gap because there was nobody else doing it.
“Nowadays there’s all the Three Beards stuff.”
And there you have it, the catalysts behind the change.
When the journey began in 2011, Bryce, Mike and Ben (a former Beard), were just three guys thrown together through a tweet up, a sort of blind meeting for social networkers.
Bryce takes me back to their first day of partnership. “Over one too many pints we thought it was a bit random that we had even become friends and I think we kind of felt that there was a lot missing.”
Here were three techies, passionate about the startup community but with no regular social outlet to share their interests.
All three men thought “screw it, we’ll just do it” and so the Digital Sizzle was born.
This was a BBQ where bright young startups could come together and share inspiration.
Ambitious they were not. Twenty business geeks were expected but 120 turned up. The team have been running quarterly BBQs since July 2011 .
Word got out that these were the men to know on London’s tech circuit. Michael Smith, creator of the Silicon Drinkabout, a pub crawl where like-minded entrepreneurs could spend a Friday night of revelry, asked them to run the project.
“He said: ‘I’ve been seeing there’s been a lot of buzz around Sizzle, how would you guys feel about running Drinkabout? I want this to be the startup drinks’,” Bryce recalls.
“When we took over, it was maybe 15 people at the pub and 400 followers. Now it’s about 5,000 and we now get up to 300 people on a Friday,” says Bryce.
Drinkabout is a blind networking place for startups attended by teenagers and CEOs alike.
But why did the crowds roll in?
“There was a lot of organisation involved but the other part was actually showing up every Friday night and saying to those who showed up that if you don’t know someone look out for these people.
“Then we got the t-shirts and balloons so people could recognise us. The ethos is: don’t look for the person that comes with six friends or the famous founder, look for the people who look a bit lost,” Bryce says.
The Three Beards are not just the leaders of the Drinkabout pack, they are also the go-to for internet giants looking to link into London’s tech set.
“We met the head of comms for Facebook the other day because he said they are moving engineers into London, they want to be more involved in the community and that we seem to be the community,’” says Bryce.
From Facebook to Friday night, these are the tech icons in a city which, as Bryce quips, “is killing it” on the startup scene.
This Friday’s Drinkabout will be held at Google Campus from 6pm.
