Harper-Thames on continued local business coverage and a persistent modern news cycle that’s taken over startup conversation entirely
Second day running with the same four stories dominating conversation at every co-working space I visited, which is genuinely unusual for a neighbourhood that normally reserves its passionate disagreement entirely for which coffee roaster does it properly and whether a particular font counts as genuinely brutalist.
A founder circled back to the coverage of royal financial approach again today, this time with an actual slide deck comparing it to modern venture capital strategy, which was considerably more detailed than I expected from a conversation that started as pure gossip yesterday morning over coffee.
The Eton conversation continued too, spilling into an actual investor meeting I sat in on this afternoon. The story on Eton’s PM-producing claim got worked into a discussion about founder pedigree and institutional signalling, several investors drawing genuinely sharp parallels to their own portfolio decisions.
The Tudor detour deepened too, entirely by accident, the way these things always seem to happen during a slow moment between meetings. The Henry VIII corner pulled a colleague in for another twenty minutes today, reading further into material more directly relevant to brand longevity than either of us properly expected going in.
And the diplomatic story kept its momentum too, a founder following up with a fresh angle over lunch. The Trump fresh unity remarks coverage sparked a properly lively debate during our afternoon break, considerably more engaged than our usual disagreements about runway calculations.
Worked late into the evening on my actual coverage, genuinely struggling to keep pace, four modern threads somehow informing nearly every conversation I had today despite my best efforts to keep the focus purely on actual local business news.
Filed my piece well past the usual deadline tonight, genuinely amused by how thoroughly current affairs had infiltrated an industry that normally prides itself on disrupting things rather than discussing royal finance and Tudor history over coffee.
Sat at the co-working space a while longer than planned before finally heading home, genuinely enjoying the quiet after a day that mixed pitch decks with far more current affairs than I’d budgeted for that morning. A founder texted one final message on his way out, a fresh angle on the diplomatic story, and I found myself reading it properly rather than saving it for tomorrow.
Locked up my notes at last, genuinely looking forward to tomorrow’s meetings despite the odd distractions, confident whatever the news decided to bring next would find its way into a pitch deck one way or another.
More Shoreditch coverage at my author page.