retail-media
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Mukundu Kumaran and the three-page plan
After years building advertising technology at Yahoo, Mukundu Kumaran co-founded C1X to make its complicated transactions easier to manage. His career keeps returning to a practical question: can the people using the software get the work done?
Kiryl Chykeyuk and the Business of Making You Look
A childhood friendship, a bicycle wheel and a decision to turn down the Dragons. How HYPERVSN’s founder built a career around the moment someone stops walking.
Daniel Knijnik and the trouble with getting bigger
Before Quartile, Daniel Knijnik was an engineer trying to make projects arrive on time. His career keeps returning to a stubborn question: what happens when a good business gets too big to run by hand?
Bryan Leach and the value of a second look
An airplane passenger photographed a business card. Bryan Leach saw a reason to leave the law. The Ibotta founder has spent the years since turning everyday purchases into a business built around evidence.
Darren Mann and the short distance between looking and buying
From 7-Eleven TV to augmented reality in shopping malls, Darren Mann has built media around the moment a customer decides what to do next. At ARIA, that work now includes an AI shopping assistant.
Rebecca Jonah and the business of a second look
From restructuring law to fashion and digital collectibles, Rebecca Jonah has built a career around what happens after the first transaction. At ARIA, that question now reaches into the shopping mall.
Michael Jaconi and the missing step between wanting and buying
At Rakuten, Michael Jaconi saw a mobile economy built around getting things done. At Button, he has spent more than a decade trying to make the journey from a useful recommendation to a purchase less of an obstacle course.
Anthony Rotio and the distance between an idea and a result
A Harvard computer scientist took a detour through beer marketing and a pizza invention. Now GrowthLoop’s co-founder and co-CEO is working on a stubborn business problem: how to make the next decision better than the last.
Sunil Rayan and the Price of Attention
Across mobile apps, streaming and machine-learning advertising, Sunil Rayan has pursued the same stubborn question: can attention be turned into an outcome without wasting either? His career is a tour through the systems that decide what the world sees next.
Eric Sheinkop Is Betting the Internet Will Tire of Guessing
A teenage record-label founder stumbled into royalties, helped independent musicians reach Coca-Cola, and then carried the same argument into online shopping: expertise should travel farther than fame.
Kristie Schmuck Learned to Market the Moment of Choice
From demand-generation plumbing to Flywheel's C-suite, the Toronto marketer built a career around the instant data, media and a shopper's decision meet.
Harshal Nimawat Is Learning to Steer Where Retail Meets AI
From Mastercard and Wharton to CommerceIQ, Harshal Nimawat has built a career around the places where technology, capital and operating judgment collide. His route into the CEO's office includes one unusually literal lesson in keeping a crew on course.
Conner Sherline Is Building the Cooperative Internet He Once Wished Brands Had
He watched digital advertising become expensive, saw independent storefronts leave valuable attention unused, and built Disco around a stubborn idea: brands can grow faster when their data and distribution work together.
Melanie Babcock-Brown Is Building the System Behind the Sentiment
She learned the web when it was new, learned customer data when it was intimidating, and helped turn a retailer's ad network into an operating business. Now Melanie Babcock-Brown has to make a portfolio of gifts feel like one connected act of care.
Molly Battin
At The Home Depot, Molly Battin is turning a familiar orange apron into a useful media system - one built around projects, people and the moment a customer gets stuck.
Tony Rogers
Tony Rogers is the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Dollar General, where he leads brand, media, personalization and the DG Media Network across the retailer's roughly 20,000 stores. A University of Texas graduate who started in accounting before turning to marketing, he built a 25-year career at consumer brands and retailers including Pillsbury, Frito-Lay and Gateway before spending more than 17 years at Walmart, where he rose to Chief Marketing Officer of Walmart U.S. and later Chief Member Officer at Sam's Club. He joined Dollar General in June 2024 after a stint as CMO of Signet Jewelers, bringing a philosophy built around purpose, evolution and keeping the customer at the center of every decision.
Marlow Nickell
Marlow Nickell is co-founder and CEO of Grocery TV, the largest in-store retail media network for U.S. grocery. From a University of Texas physics degree and a stint at McKinsey, he took the unusual path of writing the original software himself before running the company that now puts screens in over 6,500 grocery stores reaching roughly 95 million shoppers.
Matthew Elsley
Matthew Elsley is co-founder and CEO of QSIC, an AI-driven in-store audio and retail media platform used by 7-Eleven, McDonald's, Coles Express and other chains across three continents. Founded in Melbourne in 2012 with schoolfriend Nick Larkins, QSIC bootstrapped for years before raising a $4M Series A from Carthona Capital and a $25M Series B led by Hedosophia in January 2025. Elsley relocated to Dallas to run North American growth as QSIC rolled out Gulp Radio to 12,000 7-Eleven, Speedway and Stripes stores.
Jason Kowalski
Jason Kowalski is the co-founder and CEO of ProductWind, an influencer technology platform built for brands that sell on online retailers like Amazon and Walmart. A former Amazon product lead who built the retailer's self-service marketing platform, Kowalski started ProductWind in 2020 on a contrarian idea: brands should market to retail algorithms, not just shoppers. The company coordinates thousands of micro-influencers to move e-commerce metrics that matter to those algorithms - sales velocity, reviews, organic placement, and Best Seller Rank - rather than chasing likes and reach. Bootstrapped and profitable from day one, ProductWind grew revenue tenfold before raising a total of roughly $5.17M in seed funding.
David Feinleib
David Feinleib is a serial entrepreneur, former venture capitalist, and author who is now Founder and CEO of It'sRapid.ai, a Palo Alto AI platform that turns product data and existing assets into finished commerce content for major brands. He has founded multiple companies acquired by EMC, HP, and Keynote Systems, sold Content Analytics to Syndigo in 2019, invested as a General Partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, and written four books including 'Why Startups Fail' and 'Big Data Bootcamp.'
Philip Stanger
Philip Stanger is the co-founder and CEO of Olyns, a Silicon Valley startup turning recycling into a self-funding business by pairing AI-powered reverse vending 'Cubes' with retail media advertising. A classically trained musician with degrees from Johns Hopkins and Yale, he scored films before founding indoor-positioning startup Wifarer, then led Apple Maps' indoor mapping team for five years. He started Olyns in 2019 after watching wildfires and floods hit the Santa Cruz Mountains where he lives, betting that recycling fails not for lack of technology but because its business model is broken.
Alasdair McLean-Foreman
Alasdair McLean-Foreman is the founder and CEO of Teikametrics, a Boston-based AI platform that helps Amazon and Walmart sellers optimize advertising and pricing across more than $10 billion in marketplace transactions. A former Great Britain 800m runner and Harvard track captain, he started selling sporting goods from his dorm room in 2001, became one of Amazon's first third-party retailers in 2003, exited a fitness startup to News Corp, and has raised roughly $65 million for Teikametrics from investors including Intel Capital, Jump Capital, Centana Growth Partners and SoftBank's Lydia Jett.
Amanda Richman
Amanda Richman is VP of Global Media Sales at Microsoft Advertising, leading a 700+ person omnichannel sales team from New York. A 30-year veteran of media and advertising, she has run agencies including Wavemaker US and Mindshare North America, winning Adweek's U.S. Media Agency of the Year at Wavemaker in 2020. She joined Microsoft in March 2024 to help brands navigate the convergence of generative AI, search, and connected TV advertising.
Kya Sainsbury-Carter
Kya Sainsbury-Carter spent over 20 years at Microsoft, most recently as Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Advertising, where she led a global ads business generating more than $18 billion in annual gross revenue. She oversaw the division's transformation through AI-powered and agentic advertising, expanded retail media, and enterprise partnerships before departing in May 2026 - with LinkedIn's Matt Derella named to succeed her.
Lynne Kjolso
Lynne Kjolso is VP of Global Partner and Retail Media at Microsoft Advertising, where she leads the company's retail media strategy and global partner ecosystem. A philosophy PhD turned digital advertising executive, she has spent over 15 years at Microsoft shaping search, retail, and commerce media. Named to Ad Age's Tech Power List 2024 and The List 2025, she is a leading voice on retail media standardization, gaming as an advertising frontier, and the intersection of AI and commerce.
Deren Baker
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.
Guru Hariharan
Guru Hariharan is the Founder and CEO of CommerceIQ, a unicorn-valued AI platform that helps 2,200+ consumer brands - from Nestle to Kellogg's - automate and optimize their retail ecommerce operations across Amazon, Walmart, and other major retailers. A veteran of Amazon and eBay, he co-invented the Amazon Selling Coach, sold his first company Boomerang Commerce's analytics unit to Lowe's in 2019, and pivoted to build CommerceIQ into a $136.6M ARR business by 2024. In May 2025, he launched AllyAI, a suite of agentic AI teammates purpose-built for retail - a product he describes as pioneering the next era of algorithmic commerce.
Ikkjin Ahn
Ikkjin Ahn is the co-founder and CEO of Moloco, the machine learning-powered advertising platform he built from scratch after spotting a gap at Google: 90% of apps in the Play Store weren't making money. Armed with insights from building YouTube's monetization engine, he launched Moloco in 2013 to democratize access to the kind of AI that only tech giants could afford. Thirteen years later, the company is a $1.5B+ unicorn with 700+ employees across 12 offices, over $200M in annual revenue, and profitable for five consecutive years - a rare combination in Silicon Valley. As of early 2026, Moloco is weighing an IPO.
Malcolm McRoberts
Malcolm McRoberts is the Chief Executive Officer of Mood Media, the world's leading in-store media solutions company, which reaches over 150 million consumers daily across 500,000 business locations in 140+ countries. With more than 30 years of executive-level management experience spanning Fortune 500 companies like Deluxe Corporation and NCR, McRoberts joined Mood Media in January 2021 following Vector Capital's acquisition of the company. Under his leadership, Mood Media acquired Vibenomics in 2023 - the leading in-store ad network technology provider - and subsequently partnered with Stingray Advertising to create the largest U.S. in-store retail media network, reaching over 800 million monthly shoppers.
Max Willens
Max Willens is a Principal Analyst at EMARKETER covering social media and the creator economy, with a career spanning journalism, research, and media strategy. A CUNY journalism graduate and Punch Sulzberger Scholar, he spent six years at Digiday rising from platforms reporter to Senior Editor of Research and Features before crossing into industry analysis. His work sits at the intersection of media business, social platforms, advertising, and the evolving creator economy, and he co-hosts EMARKETER's 'Behind the Numbers' podcast. He also publishes 'The Idea,' a newsletter focused on the newsletter and publishing industry.