We are delighted to invite you to the next in our series of Contemporary FD Bitesized webinars, jointly hosted with our strategic partners EquityFD. These are designed to supplement our live annual Contemporary FD Summit, scheduled for September 2024, where the CFOs and FDs of the country's most exciting, innovative and ambitious companies come together to share ideas.

For this session Sarah Hunt, CEO and founder of EquityFD will be in conversation with Edwina Surtees.

Edwina is CFO of Trouva. As a marketplace, it is essentially a complex technology platform enabling customers from around the world to discover and buy products from hundreds of unique, independent Boutiques.

Edwina’s time there has required striking flexibility with her roles covering finance, legal, people, culture, performance marketing, logistics and customer operations. She started with a small team and has had to build it on the run. She was Head of Business Operations then the Finance Director, then CFO. She has had to become much more technical herself as her roles have involved working closely with product and data teams.

Trouva’s ownership has undergone significant changes, initially influenced by venture capital firms focusing on funding rounds and debt financing in the early years. Edwina as part of the leadership team, sold it to Made who, alas, went into administration within 6 months of acquisition. Edwina successfully sold Trouva to Restore as majority owners, but with additional Angel/VC fundraising on the horizon.

For customers and the boutiques, mercifully, much of this has been invisible but it had an impact on the team and taught Edwina a lot about effective communication and team management at times of crisis.

We hope you can join us for what will be an energetic, informative session with time for questions at the end.