FUTURE OF RETAIL

Mandeep is the former CEO & founder of Trouva, the SaaS-enabled marketplace for Europe's best independent retailers, which was sold in 2022. Trouva raised ~$50m from investors including Index Ventures, Octopus & LocalGlobe, and was one of Europe's fastest growing technology companies. Mandeep was named one of the 100 most influential people in Retail by Retail Week for 3 years running. He is now an Angel investor in over 80 B2B technology startups and a Venture Partner at Hoxton Ventures.

Gabbi is a Partner at Stride.VC. He has led investments into companies including Knowunity, Screenloop, Chapter Two, Argo AI, and Seva among others. Prior to joining Stride.VC, he spent almost three decades as a founder - building, backing, branding (and occasionally breaking) startups, scale ups, and megacorps. He likes being tattooed. A lot ;)

Bernice spent two years at private equity firm Triton Partners before transitioning to venture capital as an investment consultant. She is focused on new investments at Guinness and is responsible for developing ESG policies, reporting on impact metrics, and advising companies on best practices to align with responsible investing goals. She holds a First-Class degree in Economics from Goldsmiths University. Outside of her role she runs a VC-focused TikTok, sharing insights & content on VC trends and ESG topics.

Asif is Partner and Head of early-stage in the Tech & High Growth team at Cooper Parry. He works closely with founders and entrepreneurs across all accounting, tax, and advisory disciplines and helps founding teams navitage their journey to scale.

Adviser to some of the world’s leading tech driven businesses, Kolvin was ranked by Legal 500 for data & technology as known for being ‘extremely responsive and client focused’. He has vast experience advising on legal issues related to the internalisation of technology: his work regularly involves complex, cross-border matters that raise multi-faceted IP, data privacy, consumer protection, and internet regulatory issues.

For over a decade, Ben has been helping high growth VC backed companies build go-to-market teams and scale business operations around the globe, quickly and cost-effectively. Passionate about making it 'less scary' to grow your business in new countries whilst remaining compliant & hire your 'A-team' globally with the experience to help you scale revenue & be successful in new markets.

Jenny founded Untapped Pricing to shine a light on the untapped potential of pricing to boost profitability, drive engagement with customers and unlock growth bottlenecks. Her background includes 10 years with eBay where she built world-class analytics teams to transform their 20 petabytes of data into commercial intelligence, delivering major price changes across their European markets. Jenny also teaches Entrepreneurship at Warwick Business School and Pricing Strategy at LSE.

Wanda is a serial founder, founder-coach, and pragmatic organisational psychologist. She has spent 30 years helping founders grow their businesses as they position, transition through investment rounds, expand into new regions, experience hypergrowth and exit. Primarily in Tech, Wanda has helped founders bridge the Founder-to-CEO gap and with 20 000+ hours of coaching experience can help unlock new ways of being & doing that will accelerate growth and fulfilment.

Tristan is a co-founder, new business generator, CRM expert and Martech whizz. Prior to Growth Division he worked at Europe’s largest tech distribution firm in their Business Intelligence unit, a start-up called Ordoo, and then founded Growth Division to help start-ups overcome one of the biggest challenges Ordoo faced: finding scalable channels to market. He uses Growth Division’s unique growth process and team of marketing experts to help founders define strategies, validate channels, and unlock exponential growth.

Validify is an invite-only community and events platform for senior leaders in retail and DTC. It connects enterprise and mid-size retailers with innovative tech solutions, acting as a go-to-market partner for retail tech founders. With over 15 years’ experience at the intersection of strategy, technology, and operations, Laura has held leadership roles across both retail and tech - spanning global corporations to early-stage startups. She began her career in management consulting, leading digital transformation initiatives for major UK retailers, before serving as a senior operator across multiple VC-backed businesses. Laura is also a committed mentor and occasional angel investor.

Sophie was part of the growth team that built MVF, a now exited start-up but in 2012, she traded security to become an adventure athlete and is the only person in history to climb the highest mountains in the eight alpine countries and cycle between them. Sponsored by brands like Adidas, Land Rover, and Kellogg's, she built ‘Challenge Sophie,’ to champion challenges as a route to growth. As a mindset coach and keynote speaker, she leverages this experience and partners with leaders to cultivate mental fortitude, strategic vision, resilience, emotional intelligence, a growth mindset, and authentic leadership. Her work spans high-growth tech start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, driven by a passion for helping ordinary people achieve the extraordinary.