UK's Ryft raises largest UK payments Series B of 2026 at GBP 20M
Manchester payments-infrastructure fintech Ryft closed a GBP 20 million Series B on Sept 17, 2026, led by Gresham House Ventures, to fund expansion into Europe and the US. Ryft now…
Industry hub
Building in E-commerce / Retail.
Your industry hub: founders who did it in E-commerce / Retail, the news that moves the space, and the playbooks to act on it.
Case studies
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E-commerce / Retail 2010s India
Falguni Nayar
Nykaa
Banker who quit at 50 to build Nykaa into India's top beauty retailer
Food & Beverage 1980s United States
Howard Schultz
Starbucks
Bought a 6-store Seattle roaster and built the world's largest coffeehouse chain
Marketplace 2000s China
Jack Ma
Alibaba
Rejected English teacher who built Alibaba into a global e-commerce giant
E-commerce / Retail 1990s United States
Jeff Bezos
Amazon
Built Amazon from an online bookstore into a trillion-dollar everything store
E-commerce / Retail 2000s United States
Sara Blakely
Spanx
Bootstrapped Spanx from $5,000 in savings to a self-made billion-dollar brand
SaaS / Software 2000s Canada
Tobias Lütke
Shopify
Coder who built a snowboard shop, then pivoted its software into Shopify
Latest news
All →OpenAI tests Sponsored Agents in ChatGPT, adds Shopify and HubSpot ad tools
On September 16, 2026, OpenAI began piloting Sponsored Agents, clearly labeled advertiser-run chats, inside ChatGPT with US brands like Angi and Wayfair, and shipped its first ecom…
Profound raises $180M Series D at $1.8B for AI-search visibility (AEO)
On September 15, 2026 Profound announced a $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation, co-led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, nearly double its February valuation. The platform tracks and…
Hong Kong's Qupital secures $300M to fund e-commerce sellers with AI underwriting
Qupital announced roughly $300 million in combined equity and asset-backed financing on September 13, 2026, with M Capital leading and MUFG and Quester Capital participating. It pr…
OpenAI launches GPT Image 2.5 with faster Flare and Sunburst APIs
On September 8, 2026 OpenAI released GPT Image 2.5, exposing two developer APIs: Flare, its fastest model generating high-quality images at two to four times the speed of GPT-Image…
ChatGPT advertising crosses $1B annualized run rate under 200 days after launch
OpenAI's ChatGPT advertising business crossed a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate as of August 31, 2026, fewer than 200 days after its February 2026 pilot launch. It marks the…
Playbooks & tools
Checklists →Step-by-step checklists and founder-fit tools. E-commerce / Retail-specific picks are coming; start from the full library today.