Uncrowd announces Phil Barden as new investor

Retail analytics startup Uncrowd has completed a £500,000 seed funding round with the announcement of Phil Barden as an angel investor in its Friction/Reward Indexing platform.

This was opened on a rolling basis over two years ago and has now closed as it is fully subscribed.

Barden is the founding Managing Director at DECODE marketing. Alongside 16 years with Unilever, rising to Marketing VP, he has also completed spells at Diageo and T-Mobile.

Uncrowd CEO Richard Hammond says: “Phil's investment is significant not least because outside of Uncrowd, he is probably the only other person on the planet right now who can claim to be expert in understanding the role of friction versus reward.”

“Phil’s book 'Decoded. The Science Behind Why We Buy' is a foundational text on practical behavioural science, every retailer should read it. We at Uncrowd are honoured to have his unique expertise now available to us. Together we will continue to transform the next generation of customer analytics.”

Joanne Webb

Joanne Webb recently joined Uncrowd as a board advisor.

Webb is Global E-commerce & Digital Director at Merlin Entertainments. She has also worked for Gap/Banana Republic as Interim European Marketing Director and Due Entertainment as Interim Sales and Marketing Director/Commercial Director.

“As you know, I’ve never been one to just “follow the herd” and this team have a truly innovative and deeply relevant product on their hands. I look forward to being part of their success that is surely on the cards,” she said in a LinkedIn post.

“For those of you who are constantly frustrated by a lack of insight to explain why you’re losing customers to competitors...and little understanding of how to get them back...here’s the solution, and they’re a fun bunch too!”

Uncrowd was founded by Hammond in 2017. He is the author of Friction/Reward and Smart Retail and also an advisory committee member at NearSt, a startup whose technology links products on shop shelves in real-time to nearby customers searching in Google.