Fashion e-commerce entrepreneur Chris Morton is the founder of Lyst, a fashion aggregation and discovery app and universal checkout cart that has raised more than $70 million in four rounds of funding since 2010. The platform is used by over 50 million consumers globally.
Before launching Lyst, Morton was an investor at Balderton Capital and Benchmark Capital, two of Europe’s largest venture funds, with a focus on consumer internet (e-commerce), music and games start-ups. “Our name comes from the fact shoppers can ‘list’ the items they like via wish-lists, and share them publicly too. But what they really love is that they no longer have to waste time browsing multiple stores to find their preferred labels or designs,” Morton told The Financial Times in September 2014.
Lyst partners with retailers and brands to show consumers a personalised product feed based on what influencers or tastemakers they follow. The company acquires an affiliate fee from purchases made via the app, but it also has another product — data about consumer behaviour that it can sell back to its brand and retail partners.
“We can help streamline inventory by monitoring what sizes and colours are the most popular, or what products are the most likely to be returned. We can advise companies on the peak hours shoppers peruse their sites and how to prepare for that — 6pm for example, is where we see the greatest spike on a normal working day,” said Morton.
Prior to that, he was business development manager of the energy and materials division of QinetiQ, a European technology research and development company. Morton grew up on the East Coast of the US before receiving an MA in Physics and Philosophy from Cambridge University. He has also spoken at Harvard Business School, Cambridge University and Oxford University, among others.
