Our upcoming Events

Copenhagen - October 8ht-9th - Sponsorship packages 

In Partnership with Edesk

eDesk is built for commerce. It brings every customer conversation from marketplaces, webstores, and social channels into one place. No more jumping between platforms, no more lost messages. Over 5,000 retailers, from Suzuki to Superdry to CarParts.com, use eDesk to run customer service that scales with their growth.

Our ecosystem carries strong logos, but what matters most is the community behind them.

This Week at EVOLVE

Every week in the Club, we pause to connect the dots across commerce, leadership, and life. This week’s conversation with Kristian Mørk Puggaard, CEO & Founder of Tembi, reminded us that leadership is not only about what we know, but about what we choose to see.

Kristian is building something more ambitious than another analytics platform. With Tembi, he is shaping a new category:

Prescriptive intelligence. Instead of replaying last quarter’s P&L, he is asking leaders to drive with a windshield, not a rear-view mirror.

The provocation is sharp: relying only on gut feel or internal dashboards is not simply old-fashioned. It borders on negligence.

Rear-view vs Windshield Leadership

Most of us grew up with the same rituals of strategy: review the past, analyze the numbers, write a plan. Kristian challenged that rhythm. Markets shift too quickly, categories collapse too suddenly, and consumer behavior mutates too fast for leadership to rely on memory.

He calls the alternative windshield leadership: placing bets informed by live external signals, not stale internal reports. Which categories are growing? Which carriers are losing their checkout position and dropping volumes overnight? Which brands are quietly pulling ahead?

From Description to Prescription

Most data tools describe what has already happened. Tembi prescribes what to do next. That shift may sound subtle, but it reframes the entire relationship between technology and leadership.

Prescription means:

• Detecting when a logistics partner is slipping in checkout, and acting before 80% of volumes vanish.

• Spotting when tariffs tilt demand from Adidas to Nike weeks before it shows up in sales reports.

• Revealing when a brand’s “growth” is built on assumptions rather than actual consumer behavior.

It is not a dashboard. It is a decision engine.

Strategy in Real Time

The conversation highlighted an uncomfortable truth: strategy as a once-a-year exercise is dead.

Twenty percent of webshops disappear every year, fifteen percent are born. Carriers lose position in a matter of days. Consumer loyalty turns on a single UX choice. In this reality, strategy cannot be a static document. It must be alive, adaptive, and continuously fed by external signals.

Questions from the Room

Our members once again sharpened the discussion.

On AI and agentic commerce: we may not need webshops at all in the future. Consumers could delegate their preferences to digital agents that transact on their behalf. The implications for platforms, wholesalers, and service providers are profound.

On cross-border retail: Europe is not yet a single market. Payment trust, delivery norms, and even cash-on-delivery expectations differ by country. One-size-fits-all will fail. Those who embrace local nuance will carve moats against global giants.

On leadership gaps: Kristian observed that many companies do not even define their ICP. The skill gap is not data science. It is clarity of strategy.

On truth in data: pressed on whether Tembi could become a “source of truth” for retail, Kristian admitted that was the ambition. Not another report, but a structural engine of foresight.

The Human Side

Behind the technology is a deeply human principle: usability is adoption. Kristian designs not for data scientists, but for leaders who do not want to torture spreadsheets.

That tension between complexity and clarity is where category-defining companies are born.

Takeaways

• Rear-view is negligence. Leading only with past internal data is a gamble.

• Prescription beats description. Actionable foresight is the new competitive edge.

• Strategy is alive. It must evolve continuously with signals, not sit in a binder.

• Local nuance is moat. In Europe, adaptation to country-specific norms is the only way to compete.

• Usability wins. Data matters only if leaders can act on it.

Customer Engagement SimplifiedIn Partnership with Pagbank

Bringing financial innovation from Brazil to the World

Takeaways

• Failure is curriculum. Vinny’s mistakes as an operator shaped his greatest strengths as a strategist.

• Strategy must stay connected to the grind. The best frameworks fail without operator empathy.

• Basics matter most. Inventory, fulfillment, and systems beat shiny tools.

• Resilience is the real differentiator. Leaders aren’t defined by easy wins, but by how they show up when things go wrong.

• Listening is strategy. From podcasting to boardrooms, curiosity and attention create clarity.

Missed this session?

In partnership with Airmeet

Airmeet stands out by designing for connection in a sea of platforms chasing leads. It’s used by companies like Walmart, Accenture, and the University of Toronto, yet it works just as well for emerging communities like ours. We’ve trusted and partnered with Airmeet to run 60+ expert sessions. It’s reliable, intuitive, and built for human interaction, not just metrics.

If you host events where relationships matter more than registrations, Airmeet is worth a closer look

At EVOLVE, we’re not building another networking group.
We’re building a culture one where senior leaders share openly, learn from each other, and form partnerships that last beyond a single event.

What makes us different?
We don’t sell quick wins or inflate numbers.

We value patience, depth, the long view, and we were born global from day 1.

Our declaration for the future is simple:
Commerce is community.
And the more we connect, the stronger we all grow.
See you in the sessions or inside

—
Carlos Monteiro
Founder, EVOLVE Commerce Club

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