Aphrodite Circle

Sponsorship

Some firms do work that everyone at this table needs sooner or later: company formation, business banking, tax, immigration, payroll. If that is you, there is a way to be in the room, and it is not a pitch slot.

Not open yet. Dinners are unsponsored and paid for by the host. Sponsorship becomes reasonable once the room has a track record, which will take several dinners. The terms below are published now so that nobody has to guess at them later.

What sponsorship buys

  • A seat at a dinner, as a guest, alongside ten or so company owners.
  • Your subject on the table. Where a banking specialist sponsors the evening, business banking becomes one of the things the table works through, which is a subject most of the room has questions about.
  • Attribution, said out loud at the start and printed on the invitation.

What it does not buy

  • Not a pitch. No presentation, no slides, no five minutes at the start.
  • Not the guest list. No attendee list, no contact details, no follow-up permission, before or after.
  • Not the guest selection. Who is invited is decided the same way it always is. A sponsor cannot add a name and cannot veto one.
  • Not exclusivity over a sector, and not a standing arrangement. One dinner at a time.

Why it works this way

Because the moment a dinner becomes a channel, the people worth having at it stop coming, and then it is worth nothing to a sponsor either. The restraint is not good manners, it is the only thing that keeps the asset intact. A firm that wants a captive audience for a presentation will be happier, and better served, buying a slot at a conference.

What a sponsor gets instead is an unhurried evening with ten people who run companies and who will, within the year, need the kind of work that firm does. It moves slowly and it holds.

What it would cost

A first sponsored dinner would run to somewhere in the region of EUR 1,500 to 3,000.

Here is the arithmetic behind it. A twelve-cover dinner in this district costs somewhere around EUR 500 to 1,200 to put on, and the remainder covers the work of assembling the room. At the top of that range, three substantial conversations with qualified company owners works out at about EUR 1,000 each, which sits at the cheap end of any comparable format.

Five-figure quotes get made for first dinners in markets this size, and they are not serious. This is a small room in a small district and the price reflects it.

The other way money could change hands, disclosed early

There is a second possibility, set out here in advance so that nobody comes across it later and feels misled.

In Cyprus, referral and introducer commission is ordinary practice in corporate services. An annual bank introducer fee is a standard line item, and firms that handle company formation, banking or immigration routinely pay a commission to whoever sent the client. If someone at a dinner says they need a corporate services firm and the host points them at a good one, that firm may well offer a commission.

So, the commitment, in advance and in writing:

  • Any introduction that could earn the host a fee is declared as such at the moment it is made, to the person being introduced, before they act on it.
  • Nobody is ever steered. If there are three decent corporate services firms in Paphos, all three get named, including the ones that pay nothing.
  • It never affects the guest list. Paying a commission does not buy a seat, and refusing to pay one does not cost a seat.

A disclosed introducer fee is a business model. An undisclosed one, found out afterwards, is the end of the room, and the room is the only asset here worth protecting.

Timing

The first conversations about this will happen after two or three dinners have taken place, for the obvious reason that there is nothing to sell before then. If you would like to be in that first conversation when it happens, say so and mention your firm.