Leadership team

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Nick Brackenbury
Co-Founder & CEO

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Max Kreijn
Co-Founder & CRO

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Andreea Gheorghe
Head of Product

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Thomas Schoffelen
Head of Engineering

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Meral Ince
Customer Success Lead

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Alastair Grant
Head of Sales

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Joshua Burrows
Partnerships Lead

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Tom Butcher
Head of Business Operations


Advisory board

Paula-Nickolds

Paula Nickolds
Paula chairs NearSt's advisory board, and is CEO of The White Company, and has held leadership roles at some of the world's most iconic retailers. Paula was Managing Director of department store chain John Lewis (and the first woman to hold the position in the retailer's 150+ year history), a senior advisor at McKinsey & Co, and General Manager Commercial Merchandise at Sainsbury’s. Starting her career as a graduate trainee John Lewis's iconic Oxford Street store before rising to MD, retail runs through her veins.

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Karishma Shah
Karishma is currently Vice President at Times Internet, India's largest digital products company. Prior to Times Internet, Karishma held senior strategic, innovation and M&A positions at Alphabet, Uber and Cisco.  She was the youngest hire at Google [x] - the search giant's so-called "moonshot factory" - where the Alphabet-owned company develpos far-out technologies that can be applied to the world's biggest problems. 

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Sarah Drinkwater
Sarah is the Solo General Partner at Common Magic - the venture capital firm she founded in 2023. She has spent her career in the heart of the tech and startup ecosystem, as Head of Google for Entrepreneurs, an investor at Omidyar Network, a serial investor as part of Atomico's angel programme, and as an angel investor in over 35 companies herself. Sarah's experience and knowledge of what it takes to scale a technology company are unmatched.

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Richard Hammond
Richard has spent his career solving some of the most difficult problems for the world's largest retailers, and authored multiple best-selling business books on retail in the process, including Smart Retail, Modern Retail Management and Friction/Reward. Today he is the Founder and CEO of Uncrowd, a leading retail analytics platform that helps retailers understand and improve customer experience, by leveraging AI and machine learning to provide unique insights into shopper behavior. 

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Ian Mair
Ian serves on NearSt's board as a non-executive director. Currently a founding partner of Bothy Consulting, Ian held multiple finance directorship positions at Tesco before moving to Grosvenor Group; the multi-billion dollar family property group. At Grosvenor Ian held senior finance roles including CFO and COO for Asia, and latterly Group Services Director overseeing the firm's innovation and technology department. 

Investors

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TRUE Global
TRUE are investors who specialise in retail, with over $1B of assets under management. Investing across early stage, growth, and buyout in both Consumer and Retail Tech + Supply Chain, the firm has built a reputation as global leaders in spotting innovative technologies and retail brands that will re-shape the future of the industry. 

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Grosvenor Group
Grosvenor is a leading international property organisation with over $30B assets under management, and whose activities include urban property development. They develop, manage and invest in a growing portfolio of companies to improve property and places across many of the world’s leading cities.

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Stonebridge Capital
Stonebridge is a private investment firm backed by family office capital, with deep expertise investing in companies reshaping the future of commerce. The firm is focussed on empowering visionary entrepreneurs with early and growth stage capital backed by a world-class network, all with the aim of building the global leaders of tomorrow.

Come join our team