Last week, London's Seed Runners came together for our first-ever Monday run. Not usually the most popular night for getting out and meeting people, so thank you everyone who made the effort!

Fascinating group of people as always. Excited to meet our first defence tech startup, Allied who have an office around the corner on Baker Street. Mark Sutherland described how they partner with companies in Ukraine, where the latest defence tech is being developed on the battlefield. They then leverage UK manufacturing to scale production. Seems like our charity partner KOLO Charity Foundation should get in touch. Pavlo, I will connect you.

As a result of meeting Jamie Savage I now have a new accountant! Like many startups, we're experiencing a cash crunch. Our year end is the end of this month, so I'm keen to get our R&D claim in quickly. Our accountant was being non committal about turn around times based on getting all the info on 1 August. Not so, Novabook. I have already been very impressed with their onboarding checklist dashboard.

I also had a lovely chat with Jean-Paul. He is launching a lending product for gambling addicts (yes, you read that correctly!). Fascinating business model combining CBT with very strict controls (they identify all customer credit/debit accounts and it's then mandatory to connect them all via open banking). Jean Paul is ex JP Morgan and was previously addicted to gambling, so he has a good understanding of the space. He's looking for input on getting a banking licence, so please get in touch if you can help.

Great to see OG Seed Runner Ben, of ex GB World Champs fame. Ben's moved on from Strabo and has started a new business. It's a PE play acquiring old school manufacturing businesses from owners looking for a retirement exit. They've acquired their first business, a garage door manufacturer. Congrats!

Last, but by no means least, I met Zahra. Zahra is good pals with Stride’s Gabbi, who we both agreed needs to come on his first Seed Run! She's working on a new book - a satirical exploration of how intimacy is evolving in the age of the swipe. If you’d like to get involved by contributing a story, I've pasted the link in the comments.

We're now all off on holiday, so have a lovely summer and we are looking forward to running with you again in September.