Flywheel is a Baltimore-born digital commerce company that helps brands grow on Amazon, Walmart, Instacart and 400-plus other online marketplaces. Born in 2014 as one of the first specialists in the messy mechanics of selling through Amazon, it pairs cloud software (the Flywheel Commerce Cloud) with managed services across retail media, retail operations and market intelligence. After being bought by Ascential and then by Omnicom for roughly $835 million in 2024, Flywheel now serves more than 4,500 brands - including over half of 2022's top 100 publicly listed CPG companies - with about 2,600 colleagues across the Americas, Europe, APAC and China.
Deren Baker is the CEO of Flywheel Ventures, the innovation arm of Flywheel Commerce Network - now part of Omnicom Group after a landmark $835 million acquisition in 2023. A serial operator with deep roots in digital commerce analytics, Baker has led transformative companies including Jumpshot (which tracked 160 billion monthly clicks) and Edge by Ascential. He is a recognized thought leader in ecommerce strategy, retail media, and data-driven advertising, with bylines in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and Entrepreneur Magazine.