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.

Shop Circle is a London-based software company redefining commerce solutions for brands worldwide. With extensive experience from Amazon, Gian Maria contributed across multiple roles in strategy, category management, marketing, and branding. This diverse expertise allows him to drive growth for leading companies. At Shop Circle he focuses on building innovative tools that power over 100,000 commerce brands globally..

Wolf & Badger is a leading B Corp marketplace for independent ethical brands worldwide. George founded the company in 2010 with the goal of providing a platform for smaller brands to compete with larger, established players and offer a more exciting and responsible retail experience. With storefronts in London, New York and Los Angeles, W&B has generated over $400m of sales for independent brands in the last 5 years through its online marketplace. George also co-founded the health brand Raw Press, sat on the investment committee at London Fashion Fund and is now an active angel investor.

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 ;)

An investor in Active’s early-stage team, Anna joined the VC after working at several early-stage start-ups. Her previous roles include Founders Associate and Product Manager at Vira Health and Head of Client Development at GrassRootsWeb, as well as strategy consulting for early-stage businesses. Active partner with visionary founders to help them build successful businesses, investing into mission-driven brands, consumer technologies, and the platforms underpinning and powering their success.

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 specialises in working with venture backed companies as they scale and is widely recognised as a leader in the field. Having qualified at PWC he established and grew a successful advisory firm that was acquired in 2022. His work focusses on equipping investor backed companies with financial rigour, governance and best practices to go on to scale into large organisations. Having built a successful career as an entrepreneur that advises entrepreneurs, Asif has been appointed to various Government Boards and authored the Best-Selling book, ‘The Finance Playbook for Entrepreneurs’.

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.

Kirsty is an experienced, award-winning leadership & executive coach. With 26 years as an accredited trainer, 16 years as a certified coach, and 6 years as a coach supervisor, she brings deep expertise and a playful, purposeful and creative purposeful approach to transformation. Her debut bestseller, "Untangled – A Practical and Inspirational Guide to Change We Choose and Change We Don’t," was published in November 2023.

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.