The eCommerce Acquiror Summit
The leading conference for acquirors of eCommerce companies in the lower-middle market eCommerce sector.
This Is Year 4 Of The Acquiror Summit.
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.
Date & Time: March 9th, 2026, 8am – 6pm
Location: 1 Liberty Street, New York
Who’s Attending: Acquirors of eCommerce Brands, Selected Top Tier Brands
# of Attendees: 150-200
Our Sponsors
Our events have been proudly sponsored by global eCommerce leaders.
Summit Agenda
01
Doing Deals
Excellence In Sourcing
CEO, Axial – Peter Lehrman
10 Breakout Beauty Brands To Keep An Eye On
Co-Founder, Apex – Simon Deeny
10 Brands That Will Be Put Up For Sale In 2026
Founder, Fintent – Alex Lukashov
Brands Being Sold By The Fortia Group
Curated brands actively exploring exits
Failing Before The Ink Is Dry – Killing Investments With Generalist-Driven Diligence
Insights & Strategy Director, eComplete – Josh Elliot
Acquisition Financing Trends
Managing Partner, Deep Ocean Partners – Alex Urdea and Managing Director, Arena Investors – Ruven Shafir
What Makes It Through IC
Principle, North Castle Partners – Alan Bui
02
Value Creation
How Breakout Brands Scale
Managing Partner, Because Ventures – Jeremy Horowitz
Scaling To 9 Figures With AI & Persona-Led Creative Strategy
Co-Founders, Soar WIth Us – Joe Marston and Olly Hudson
How To Consistently And Scalably Add Value In An AI Rollup
Founder, Pilotwave Holdings – Afsheen Afshar
Leveraging Data To Scale
Managing Director, Charm – Edricco Reina and Prelude Growth PE
Stand Out From The Crowd - How Quant Traders Approach Amazon Advertizing
Founder & CEO, Laurence – Matthew Chen
Multi-Channel Fulfillment at Scale
Amazon – Speaker TBA
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)
Launch: Beauty Value Lab
Making beauty brands exit-ready to maximize value at sale
Co-Founder, The Fortia Group – Emmett Kilduff
03
Successful Exits
Analysis Of 40,000 Deals. How The Few Succeed
Professor of Accounting & Law, University of Buffalo – Feng Gu
Anatomy of 10 Winning Deals
Speaker TBA
Inside an Exit: Founder Edition
Speaker TBA
Inside an Exit: PE Edition
Speaker TBA
Deal Structure That Gets Deals Done
Co-Founder, The Fortia Group – Emmett Kilduff
Where Multiples Are Actually Clearing
Co-Founder, The Fortia Group – Emmett Kilduff
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.
Lisa Abel
Lisa Abel is a Sr Partnership Development Manager at Amazon Ads, where she builds high‑impact partnerships that drive revenue growth, product adoption and innovation across Amazon’s advertising ecosystem. With over a decade in marketplace leadership, including VP and consulting roles for iconic brands at Marquee Brands and as founder of AbelConsulting and Motivation Without Borders (acquired), she brings deep, operator‑level Amazon expertise from launching and optimizing thousands of SKUs through to successful brand exits.
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.
Simon Deeny
Simon Deeny is the co‑founder of Conjura, a data and analytics platform that gives investors and operators granular visibility into unit economics, customer cohorts and marketing performance for DTC and marketplace brands. He is also a founding partner at Apex, where he applies this data‑driven playbook to help eCommerce aggregators and acquirers improve diligence, portfolio performance and value creation across multiple brands.
Alan Bui
Alan Bui is a Principal at North Castle Partners, bringing a blend of eCommerce and retail media expertise to consumer growth investing, with experience across AI‑driven retail media on platforms such as Amazon, Google, Walmart, Meta and Criteo.
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.
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.
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.
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, CMO of JAQ Group, 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.
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.
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.
