2025 Week #48 - From Founding Engineers to Founder Parties: London's Week of Building, Scaling, and Social Mobility
Business and networking events • 24th - 30th November 2025
Welcome to Raise Your Profyle, a weekly round up of business and networking events in London brought to you by profylecard.com
Hello, and welcome to Week #48 of Raise Your Profyle. I’m Chris, co-founder of Profyle Card, and I’ve been on the hunt to find you the most interesting business and networking events happening in London over the next 7 days.
What separates those who take the leap from those who stay comfortable?
Late November’s calendar wrestles with the unglamorous reality behind startup mythology: founding engineers joining before there’s payroll comfort, founders navigating the chaos between zero and one, and the uncomfortable truth about who actually gets access to the game.
There’s a first-ever dataset on social mobility in UK startups launching at Atomico, fireside chats with Clay’s co-founder who went from Hillary Clinton’s campaign to building growth tools, and candid panels asking why someone would accept founder-level risk for less equity and certainty. Between the Walthamstow founder party and the solicitors’ social in Liverpool Street, decentralised science meetups and 24-hour RL hackathons, the through-line is refreshingly honest: building things is hard, the path isn’t linear, and the people who make it often started somewhere unexpected. These aren’t events celebrating overnight success, they’re conversations about the messy middle, the trade-offs nobody mentions, and what it actually takes to go from idea to traction.
Let’s jump in…
Design Engineering Night #5
Monday, 24 November @ 6:00 pm • Register to See Address, Central London
Sam & Tikhon spent time looking for people like them - people who fell in love at the intersection of two disciplines, design and engineering. They searched for meetups, events, Twitter but couldn’t find anything for design engineers, so they’re bringing the finest design engineering minds in Europe together. Features Cory Watilo (Brand & Design Lead, PostHog), Dean Blanc (GitHub), Niklas Muhs (Lovable). Event is sold out.
Granola Firesides with Varun Anand (Clay)
Tuesday, 25 November @ 6:00 pm • Register to See Address, Central London
Join Granola HQ with Varun Anand, Co-founder of Clay, the best way to turn any growth idea into reality. He started his career in politics and government working in a variety of roles for Hillary Clinton, including on her 2016 presidential campaign. Come for an intimate fireside chat exploring Varun’s journey from politics to tech entrepreneurship. Event is sold out.
Women in Business Lunch
Wednesday, 26 November @ 12:30 pm • Hampton Court Road, Kingston upon Thames
A networking lunch event organised by Kingston Chamber of Commerce in partnership with Time & Leisure. Connect with fellow women in business over lunch in Hampton Court. Sales have ended for this event.
In the Trenches: The Realities of Being a Founding Engineer
Wednesday, 26 November @ 6:00 pm • Register to See Address, Central London
Being a founding engineer isn’t for the faint of heart - you join before there’s product-market fit, before there’s certainty and sometimes before there’s payroll comfort. Join for a candid conversation on the realities of being a founding engineer: the trade-offs, the chaos and the incredible upside if you get it right. Panel features engineers who’ve been there - helping take startups from zero to one (and sometimes, zero to zero). Presented by Dex and Concept Ventures.
Founder Nation: Launch Party
Wednesday, 26 November @ 6:30 pm • Signature Brew Blackhorse Road, Walthamstow
Founder Nation’s first ever quarterly founder party for over 100 founders of rapidly scaling startups. Join for drinks and nibbles at Signature Brew, Blackhorse Road, London; just 5 minutes off of the Victoria line. Come enjoy chat over good beer (and other drinks) with great company, and maybe we’ll even solve a few problems together. Expect founders from early stage start ups such as Dragons’ Den deal-makers Stocked through to scale-up successes like Matterport.
Co-Mingle - Solicitors’ Social
Wednesday, 27 November @ 6:30 pm • 12 Austin Friars, Liverpool Street
Join us at the Co-Mingle - Solicitors’ Social for a fun evening of networking, drinks and good conversation with fellow legal professionals. Welcome to the Solicitors’ Social organised by the City of London Solicitors’ Company, a fantastic opportunity to connect with others in the profession. Few tickets left.
The State of Social Mobility in UK Startups and VC
Wednesday, 27 November @ 6:30 pm • Atomico, Central London
Join founders and investors from the SMV community at Atomico’s HQ for a first look at their latest research data on the state of social mobility in the UK startup ecosystem. Drawing on the first dataset of its kind, revealing headline findings on who starts and funds companies in the UK and what this means for access to opportunity. Features high profile state school founders and investors sharing their perspective on how early-stage entrepreneurs and junior talent can break through. The full report will be launched later in the year.
Decentralised Science Meetup
Thursday, 27 November @ 6:30 pm • Register to See Address, Central London
Calling all academics, researchers, web3 developers, and those who are curious about science. Join us for our monthly DeSci London meetup - everyone is welcome. This event is kindly sponsored by SUI, a next generation Layer 1 blockchain built to make digital asset ownership fast, private, and accessible. Science is broken and we think DeSci can fix it.
Iterate - London RL Hackathon w/ Cognition & Originator
Saturday, 29 November @ 9:00 am • Register to See Address, Central London
Join us on November 29-30th at Dawn Capital’s office to build RL projects with Cognition and Originator during this 24-hours hackathon and compete for 5k+ of prizes. The hackathon will take place at Dawn Capital’s office in the heart of London, with teams having 24h to build & pitch demos to a jury panel on Sunday afternoon. Hackathons, all around the world.
That’s it for this week’s Raise Your Profyle! I hope you’re feeling inspired and ready to make some connections. Don’t forget to subscribe to us on your favourite podcast platform – you can find us on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple.
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Have fun networking, and I’ll see you next week!