More than summer drinks

On 30th July, we hosted the first Spanb2b Summer Drinks.

What started as an idea to bring a few good people together turned into a packed London pub garden filled with friends, former colleagues, clients, partners and many of the people who have shaped our careers across B2B.

There was no presentation. No agenda. No organised networking. Only a lot of conversations, new introductions and people staying far later than they had probably planned.

It was exactly what we hoped it would be.

A brilliant turnout

When you start building something new, you never quite know how people will respond.

You hope they understand what you are trying to create. You hope they want to be part of it. You hope that when you invite them for a drink on a Thursday evening, at least a few of them turn up.

On 30th July, they really did.

People travelled, rearranged plans and walked through the door without necessarily knowing who else would be there. By the end of the evening, the garden was full of conversations between people who had worked together before, people meeting for the first time and people discovering they had far more in common than expected.

We are incredibly grateful to everyone who came and helped make it such a good evening.

What it means to be back

Spanb2b might be a new business, but it has been shaped by years spent working across agencies, publishers, technology companies and client teams.

We have seen the best of the B2B industry. We have also seen where it can become unnecessarily complicated, disconnected or focused on activity rather than what a business is actually trying to achieve.

Coming back together to build Spanb2b was never only about starting another agency.

It was about taking everything we had learned, keeping the parts that genuinely work and creating something that feels more useful for the people we work with.

Something built around experience, honest conversations and shared responsibility.

Something where marketing is connected to growth, rather than treated as a collection of separate channels, suppliers and deliverables.

And something we are proud to put our names to.

Building alongside brilliant people

One of the best parts of starting Spanb2b has been reconnecting with people we have worked with throughout our careers.

Some have offered advice. Some have made introductions. Some have trusted us with work. Some have simply sent a message to say they are rooting for us.

Every bit of that support has mattered.

The evening was a reminder that, while there are three of us building Spanb2b, we are not building it alone.

We are surrounded by an extraordinary network of clients, collaborators, friends and industry peers who have been generous with their time, support and encouragement.

Seeing so many of those people together meant more to us than we could properly express in a speech, or probably even in a blog post.

Only the beginning

It is still very early.

There is a lot we want to build, plenty we want to improve and a great deal of work ahead of us.

But 30th July felt like an important moment.

A chance to pause, look around and appreciate how far a conversation between three people has already travelled.

Thank you to everyone who has supported Spanb2b so far, and especially to everyone who joined us.

For those who could not make it, we have a feeling we may need to do another one.

What a lovely way to begin.