London Marketplace Startups — The Return
LMS is a 700-strong community of marketplace founders and leaders. We have held seven highly successful meetups so far, focusing on topics relevant to building marketplaces (and network-effect products). Meetups are free, invite-only and feature great speakers & panellists. Participation is curated to make sure that each attendee gets maximum value from the evening.
We — Carmen Alfonso Rico and I (Anna Kuriakose) — took over as organisers of this community last month. We are very keen to start our run with an event that keeps up the high standards of the community.
So, with great pleasure, we would like to announce #LMStartups meetup #8!
Date: 27 November 2018, at the Old Street offices of Stripe (map).
Time: 6:30 - 9pm (With a break for food and beverages)
Theme: Finding Product Market-Fit as a Marketplace
Keynote: The Highs & Lows on the Path to Product- Market Fit by Julien Callede (Co-founder of Made.com)
Julien co-founded the design brand Made.com, furniture marketplace giving customers in 8 European countries access to great quality and original design items.
At made.com, Julien acted mainly as COO and later Director of International expansion & Business Development. After less than 7 years of trading, Made.com reached sales of around 140M€ in 2017, turning cash profitable the same year, and is still growing extremely fast, leveraging a fast growing community of hundreds thousands of happy customers across Europe.
Julien has now left his executive role in the business, and is focusing his time on NED roles and new venture projects, as well as advising and consulting on customer experience and retail for fast growing companies facing scaling challenges. He recently launched The Entrepreneurs Partnership, a hub were scale-up and larger corporates can reach out to ex founders for expert advice and consulting.
Julien will speak about the path that marketplaces tread to reach product/market fit. He will share the lessons from his experience of building and scaling made.com
Panel: The Do’s & Don’ts of Finding Product-Market Fit
Julien Callede (Co-founder of Made.com)
Rachel Carrell (Founder & CEO of Koru Kids)
Rachel Carrell is the founder and CEO of Koru Kids, a fast-growing tech company dedicated to building the world’s best childcare service.
Originally from New Zealand, Rachel holds a masters and doctorate from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She has received numerous awards including ‘Inspirational Mother’ and ‘Best Businesswoman in Tech’, and was elected a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in recognition of her work. Rachel is also the mother of two young children.
She was CEO of a multinational healthcare company when she had her first baby, experienced first hand how difficult and expensive it was to arrange childcare, and decided to found Koru Kids.
Jack Tang (Co-founder and CEO of Urban Massage)
Jack is the co-founder and CEO of Urban Massage, an on-demand wellness marketplace unlocking the $3.7 trillion self-care mega-industry.
Jack is a 2nd-time entrepreneur backed by the likes of Passion Capital and Felix Capital. He is a Forbes 30 under 30 honouree, he founded his first startup whilst studying at King’s College London where The Student Job became UK’s largest job portal for undergraduates.
He enjoys solving big problems with technology, making people’s lives better by democratising access to self-care and creating communities with positive impact.
Facilitated by my co-organiser Carmen Alfonso Rico (Samaipata), the panel will discuss the do’s and don’ts of building marketplaces and achieving traction.
Come, join us for a great evening of startup & marketplace talk:
We have heard, time and again, from our attendees that they love the peer group they meet and the connections they make at each meetup.
Do you think you would enjoy meeting fellow marketplace founders & leaders? If so, please join us!
All you have to do is to fill out our registration form to request an invite.
Places are limited to 80. If you make the list, we will send you an Eventbrite link to claim your ticket.
Thank you to our sponsors and hosts — Stripe!
