Gathr has emerged from stealth to launch as a community of 10,000 founders, operators, investors and service providers.
The community was launched in early 2022 from a single LinkedIn post and became known as London Tech Drinks and London Private Equity Drinks.
It now aims to help its community to connect, learn and scale through a range of distinct product offerings, including a recently launched ‘Gathr to Find’ B2B marketplace.
Curated over the last nine months from community recommendations, at launch Gathr to Find has 125+ leading providers from boutique specialists to household names like Goodwin, Taylor Wessing, BDO, Wilson Sonsini, Ragged Edge, Cooper Parry, Blackrock and Erevena.
Gathr offers founders, investors, operators and advisors the chance to connect with peers, learn from leading experts and find providers to help them scale. Its other verticals include ‘Gathr to Connect’ and ‘Gathr to Learn’.
The ethos behind London Tech Drinks, London Private Equity Drinks and now Gathr has always been to help and support people thrive, says founder and CEO Mark Shepherd, who has himself been public about his mental health struggles.
“London Tech Drinks started out in February 2022 as a single post on Linkedin asking if anyone wanted to meet up and go for a drink in response to my own mental health challenges, and the desire to bring like-minded people together,” he said.
“From initially expecting 10 people maximum who would want to meet, the response has been overwhelming, with the community organically growing to nearly 10,000 people.
“As we scale, we have continued to launch more peer groups, to ensure people can meet others at a similar stage, sector and seniority.
“Gathr to Connect and Gathr to Learn are the foundations of the business to date, and now we’ve gone one step further, with the launch of our community recommended platform, Gathr to Find which we couldn’t be more excited about.”
Arabella Reeves, former platform manager at Atomico and board member of the Global VC Platform Community, said: “Mark has built an extraordinary community spanning the entire tech landscape at Gathr. Gathr to Find marks a significant shift in how founders, operators, and investors find and choose the service and software providers they use.
“It addresses a critical pain point for tech stakeholders who have historically relied on word of mouth, cumbersome spreadsheets, or outdated internal databases. By aggregating meticulously curated recommendations from highly reputable VCs, founders and operators worldwide, Gathr has created an incredibly valuable and trustworthy platform that will help save time and energy in researching the best-in-class providers, allowing businesses to instead focus on their growth and execution strategies.”