Earlier this summer, we hosted our inaugural Stord Summit with leading E-Commerce founders and builders in the beautiful mountains of Utah for three days of learning, activities, and collaborating. This event brought together some of the biggest founders and builders disrupting the e-commerce space. You can see some of the fun highlights of the weekend in the below video.
With so many impersonal zoom meetings, uncomfortable networking soirees, or overwhelming expo halls, we wanted to do something a bit more grounded and focused on community.
Why a Summit
When you aim to drive exceptional consumer experiences, your time is often not your own. The stressors of managing the day-to-day realities of creating, promoting, and delivering products, at scale, flawlessly, every time is crushing. Finding the space to create meaningful and organic relationships with peers and fellow e-commerce leaders while overseeing a fast-growing business requires a change of environment.
Our Stord Summit was geared to do just that – to provide the most in-demand founders and builders a momentary escape from the hustle and bustle, so they could take a breath and think critically about the hurdles ahead and the opportunities to seize.
We were honored to host over 30 amazing professionals and had an absolutely amazing time together.
Community over Connections
A key goal we had when planning Stord Summit was that our attendees would leave not with new LinkedIn connections but with a real community of peers—a group they could be open with, learn from, and share best-practices. That is why we had such an emphasis on activities and experiences that exposed the participants to each other's personality and not just their corporate titles. Now, instead of a random DM on some platform, attendees have real friendships to lean on when they encounter problems in their e-commerce business.
A lesson I have learned in my time growing Stord, it is the relationship between myself, my peers, my mentors, my board, my co-founder, and teammates that have allowed us to excel so rapidly. In particular, learning from other founders of businesses in similar industries or similar stages has always pushed us forward the most; and it was such a pleasure to help encourage that same connection with our Summit attendees.
It has now been several months since we returned home from the mountains of Utah, and I am pleased to share that these relationships are strong. Most of the attendees requested to share personal contact information so they could continue their conversations. We have had many insightful and thoughtful conversations with our attendees and are working to improve their commerce and enable better consumer experiences at scale.
The Activities & Learnings
The programming of our summit was extremely intentional – a balance of commerce-driven data presentations and fun outings to foster real conversations.
The data presentations featured speeches from myself and from Vineet Chhangani, Managing Director of Technology Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley. These presentations set out the biggest problems impacting e-commerce and influencing consumer behavior, with the goal of empowering the attendees with valuable information. Both of these presentations will be available soon on our website.
The rest of the time was split between fun activities: horseback riding, glass blowing, trap shooting, distillery tours, happy hours, and gourmet dinners. No forced interaction or round table discussions. We found this balance of information and fun to be a perfect combination to nurture real relationships.
Future Summits
If you have FOMO, know that we are already planning several more summits in the near future. The next summit will be in early 2025 following the conclusion of Peak holiday shipping season and will be an opportunity to unwind from that stress and learn from the collective experience. To request an invitation, please fill out this form.
We have also started a Stord dinner series, so that those unable to attend a longer experience or have difficulty traveling can participate in smaller functions in a nearby city. You can sign up to learn more about these dinners at the same link above.
