The eCommerce Acquiror Summit
The leading conference globally for acquirors of eCommerce brands is back for the 4th year in a row!
Join leaders across corporates, private equity, family offices, and eCommerce aggregators for a high-impact conference exploring the trends shaping the next wave of M&A in the eCommerce sector.
Our Sponsors
Our events have been proudly sponsored by global eCommerce leaders.
Summit Agenda
Arrival & Pre-Event Networking
08:00 – 09:00
Registration & Networking
Breakfast will be served from 08.00
09:00 - 09.10
Welcome Remarks
Co-Founder, The Fortia Group – Emmett Kilduff
Keynote
09:10 - 09.30
Acceleration That Pays
President of New Business and Strategic Alliances, Pattern – Don ‘eCommerce” Brett
01
Doing Deals
09:30am - 09.45am
Excellence In Sourcing
CEO, Axial – Peter Lehrman
09:45am - 10.00am
10 Breakout Beauty Brands To Keep An Eye On
Founding Partner, Apex – Caspar Waters
10.00am - 10.15am
10 Brands That Will Be Put Up For Sale In 2026
Founder, Fintent – Alex Lukashov
10.15am - 10.30am
Brands Being Sold By The Fortia Group
Curated brands actively exploring exits
10.30am - 10.45am
Failing Before The Ink Is Dry – Killing Investments With Generalist-Driven Diligence
Insights & Strategy Director, eComplete – Josh Elliot
10.45am - 11.00am
Acquisition Financing Trends
Managing Partner, Deep Ocean Partners – Alex Urdea and Managing Director, Arena Investors – Ruven Shafir
11.00am - 11.15am
What Makes It Through IC
Principal, North Castle Partners – Alan Bui
11.15am – 11.40am
Coffee & Networking Break
02
Value Creation
11.40am - 12.00pm
How Breakout Brands Scale
Managing Partner, Because Ventures – Jeremy Horowitz
12.00pm - 12.20pm
Scaling To 9 Figures With AI & Persona-Led Creative Strategy
Co-Founders, Soar WIth Us – Joe Marston and Olly Hudson
12.20pm - 12.40pm
How To Consistently And Scalably Add Value In An AI Rollup
Founder, Pilotwave Holdings – Afsheen Afshar
12.40pm - 1.00pm
Leveraging Data To Scale
Managing Director, Charm – Edricco Reina and Partner, Prelude Growth PE – William Quartner
1.00pm – 2.00pm
Lunch & Networking Break
2.00pm - 2.20pm
Stand Out From The Crowd - How Quant Traders Approach Amazon Advertizing
Founder & CEO, Laurence – Matthew Chen
2.20pm - 2.40pm
Multi-Channel Fulfillment at Scale
Senior Business Development Manager, Amazon – Eliezer Hecht
2.40pm - 3.10pm
Ops, Finance, and Forecasts That Survive Diligence
Robyn Siers (Partner, Speed M&A by Jones & Spross), Kevin Fischer (President, Kapoq), Jeff Lowenstein (Co-Founder,Free To Grow CFO)
3.10pm - 3.15pm
Launch: Beauty Value Lab
Making beauty brands exit-ready to maximize value at sale
Co-Founder, The Fortia Group – Emmett Kilduff
03
Successful Exits
3.15pm - 3.30pm
Analysis Of 40,000 Deals. How The Few Succeed
Professor of Accounting & Law, University of Buffalo – Feng Gu
3.30pm - 3.50pm
Inside an Exit: Expert Edition
Co-Founder, Theta – Professor Daniel McCarthy
3.50pm - 4.10pm
Inside an IPO: Strategic Edition
President of New Business and Strategic Alliances, Pattern – Don ‘eCommerce” Brett
4.10pm - 4.30pm
Inside an IPO: PE Edition
Insights & Strategy Director, eComplete – Josh Elliot and Digital Marketing Director, eComplete – Austin Bland
4.30 pm- 4.45pm
Where Multiples Are Actually Clearing
Co-Founder, The Fortia Group – Emmett Kilduff
5.00pm – 6.00pm
Drinks Reception & Networking (On-Site) kindly sponsored by Pattern.
Speakers
Don Brett
Don “eCommerce” Brett is a seasoned digital commerce and omnichannel leader with nearly two decades building and scaling eCommerce and retail media P&Ls for major consumer brands, including at Newell Brands across Amazon, Walmart and Target. Widely known as “eCommerce Brett,” he is a sought‑after strategist and commentator on Amazon vs Walmart, retail media, and treating eCommerce as a core business unit rather than a side project.
Alan Bui
Alan Bui is a principal at North Castle Partners, a leading private equity firm focused on investments in consumer driven product and service businesses that promote healthy, active, and sustainable living. For more than 25 years, the firm has partnered with companies in the fitness, recreation & sports, nutrition, beauty & personal care, and consumer health sectors, among others.
William Quartner
Will is a partner at Prelude Growth Partners, a New York City based growth equity firm focused on providing capital and deep value-added operating support to high potential, fast-growing consumer brands. Prelude Growth seeks to make investments of $15 million to $100 million in each company, across branded consumer categories including personal care/beauty, food & beverage, baby, pet, health & wellness and other consumer categories.
Caspar Waters
Caspar Waters is a founding partner at Apex Projects Group, a data science consultancy and private equity investor focused on the digital economy, where he backs and advises eCommerce and technology‑led consumer businesses. Previously, he led growth capital investing at Zeus Capital, after starting his career in restructuring at Deloitte, giving him a rare blend of turnaround, growth equity and hands‑on operator experience across the online retail ecosystem.
Josh Elliot
Josh Elliott is Insights & Strategy Director at eComplete Group, where he helps invest in and scale DTC brands using data-driven insight, capital and end-to-end eCommerce infrastructure. Previously at Social Chain, Lounge, atai and GMGN Labs, he brings a blend of brand-building, growth and investment expertise to the eComplete platform.
Alex Lukashov
Alex Lukashov is the founder and CEO of Fintent, a deal-sourcing and “financial intent” data platform that helps PE, VC, corporate development and M&A advisory teams originate and prioritize high‑value opportunities using firmographic, funding and behavioral signals.
Afsheen Afshar
Afsheen Afshar is a senior business executive and deep technical/AI expert who has extensive experience across a variety of industries and enterprises driving large scale technological transformation associated with hundreds of millions in value. He has held the first executive-level data and analytics role in multiple industries and companies. He regularly advises start-ups, universities, investors, enterprises, and others across the globe on how best to leverage modern technology.
Eliezer Hecht
Experienced Team Lead with a history of working in Ecommerce. Eliezer is skilled in payments, finance technology, anti-fraud technology, machine learning, partnerships, enterprise sales, managing sales teams and business strategy. Passionate about being part of a team that brings innovative & game-changing technologies to market.
Jeremy Horowitz
Jeremy Horowitz is the creator of Let’s Buy a Biz!, a media brand and holding company focused on acquiring and operating profitable eCommerce businesses, and a leading voice on DTC retention, unit economics and valuation from prior roles across the Shopify ecosystem and high‑growth brands.
Peter Lehrman
Peter is CEO and founder of Axial, responsible for delivering the company’s vision to become the trusted platform where private companies and their trusted advisors connect with capital. Prior to Axial, Peter worked in private equity at SFW Capital Partners and was part of the founding team at Gerson Lehrman Group, where he helped to build the company’s global technology platform for on-demand business expertise. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and received his MBA from Stanford Business School.
Kevin Fischer
Kevin is the President of Kapoq. Based in Chicago, Kevin previously worked in the algorithmic trading industry for ten years, during which he co-founded Atlas Trading, where he designed and implemented quantitative models and software infrastructure to support algorithmic trading and risk management across hundreds of thousands of financial instruments in the volatility futures and equity options markets. Kevin has a passion for synthesizing actionable intelligence from large, diverse data sets, in building and validating tractable models of complex systems.
Robyn Siers
Robyn Siers is a partner at Jones & Spross and co‑creator of Speed M&A™, a method-driven approach that uses technology, risk assessment and strategic playbooks to execute efficient, cost‑effective deals for strategic and financial buyers and sellers. With over two decades across software, financial services, venture capital and Cooley LLP, she now spearheads the firm’s M&A practice from Austin, advising founders and investors on repeatable, fast, high‑quality transaction execution.
Alex Urdea
Alex Urdea is the founder and Managing Partner of Deep Ocean Partners, an opportunistic credit platform focused on specialty finance, where he builds and finances tech‑enabled lending businesses under a unified operating and capital-markets playbook. Previously, he co‑founded and served as CIO of Upper90, pioneering flexible, non‑dilutive capital solutions for category‑defining companies such as Thrasio and other leaders in eCommerce, supply chain and fintech, and has held multiple board and advisory roles across the ecosystem.
Joe Marston
Joe Marston is the founder of Soar With Us and For You Advertising, two DTC agencies that build brands to 8–9 figures through creative, paid media, retention and funnel optimisation, and winners of Triple Whale’s “Agency of the Year” award. Having driven more than £300m in online sales across 200+ brands, he’s now building an “everything eCom” holding company while sharing playbooks for TikTok, Meta and creator-led growth with founders worldwide.
Olly Hudson
Olly Hudson is a DTC growth operator, founder of Soar With Us and For You Advertising, and host of a leading DTC podcast where he interviews top operators on scaling brands.
Edricco Reina
Edricco Reina is an executive leader at Charm.io and founder of BeyondRoots Growth Partners, where he helps investors and operators use data, GTM strategy and partnerships to scale SaaS, data and CPG businesses through key inflection points. Previously, he spent over a decade at SPINS, co‑founding and leading its Financial, Professional & Innovation Services group from early stages through to a $1B+ strategic exit, and has held commercial, analytics and leadership roles at Nielsen and across the natural and better‑for‑you ecosystem.
Feng Gu
Feng Gu is a professor of Accounting and Law at the University at Buffalo School of Management and former chair of its Accounting & Law department, where his research focuses on financial reporting, mergers and acquisitions, and the value relevance of accounting information. He is best known as co‑author of “The End of Accounting and the Path Forward for Investors and Managers,” a highly cited book arguing that traditional financial statements under‑report intangibles and need radical reform to remain decision‑useful for investors.
Matthew Chen
Matt Chen is the founder of Laurence (YC W26), a quantitative Amazon PPC platform that manages ads the way hedge funds trade markets, using reinforcement learning and custom models to optimise millions of bids and maximise profit for brands. A former Google and Meta software engineer, he brings deep distributed-systems and machine-learning experience to building next-generation performance marketing infrastructure for Amazon sellers and agencies.
Jeff Lowenstein
Jeff Lowenstein is the co-founder of Free to Grow CFO and a fractional CFO for eCommerce and CPG brands, helping dozens of DTC companies scale with healthy profit and cash flow through fast, insightful reporting, proactive strategic advice, and a proven “Free to Grow CFO Process” spanning M&A, funding, planning and KPI-driven performance.
Daniel McCarthy
Daniel McCarthy is co‑founder of Theta Equity Partners and Assistant Professor of Marketing at Emory University, widely regarded as the leading voice on customer-based corporate valuation (CBCV), customer lifetime value and the marketing–finance interface, following the acquisition of his prior analytics company Zodiac by Nike.
Austin Bland
Austin Bland is Digital Marketing Director at eComplete Group, where he focuses on investing in and scaling DTC brands by accelerating performance across paid media and customer acquisition, after nearly a decade rising through The Hut Group from PPC Executive to Head of Paid Media and then leading digital at The Dining Club Group.
Ruven Shafir
Ruven is responsible for the build-out of European business. Actively involved across US and Europe as well as multiple industries, products, and asset classes across the opportunistic credit universe. Arena is a global credit focused investment firm and capital provider that invests across the entire credit spectrum. Arena's experienced team of more than 30 investment professionals has experience originating, structuring and managing over $10 billion in credit based cash flow and asset-oriented investments. Arena's capital is long-term oriented and our investment horizon is broad. We have no preferences regarding industry, structure, or geography.
Emmett Kilduff
Emmett is a Co-Founder at The Fortia Group and has been doing M&A transactions since 2000 with >$20bn of deals at Wall Street firms Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse (now part of UBS). Additionally, Emmett is founder of a coaching app (Pitstop). Board member of four companies.
The Benefits Of Attending Our eCommerce Acquiror Summit
01
Hear From Industry Leading Keynote Speaker
Gain insider insights from eCommerce and M&A thought leaders who reveal real-world valuation trends, deal strategies, and growth drivers shaping the lower-middle market today. Leave with concrete data and foresight to make smarter acquisition decisions.
02
Discover How Leading Brands Create Value
Learn firsthand how top-performing eCommerce brands scale profitably, optimize operations, and unlock strategic value pre- and post-acquisition. Understand what investors and operators are doing now to outpace market shifts.
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03
Connect With High Quality eCommerce Brands
Meet curated founders of 7–8 figure brands actively preparing for partnership or exit. Build direct relationships with operators behind proven products and position yourself for proprietary deal opportunities before they reach the broader market.
04
Network With Your Industry Peers [150-200 Attendees]
Join an exclusive network of acquirors, investors, and advisors actively shaping eCommerce M&A. Exchange insights, source partnerships, and discuss deal strategies in a focused environment built for meaningful connections and collaboration.
