Alex Gordon-Furse

portday

Portday is an AI-powered platform built just for shipping agents.

It automates your Proforma & Final Disbursement Accounts (PDA/FDA), handles port tariff updates, invoice reconciliation, document generation and more.

It does this all from one clean software product so that you can spend less time on manual data entry and more time managing your clients.

Co-Founder & CEO

Playmaker

Intelligent document processing for traditional industries, with customers across Financial Services, Real Estate, Logistics and more. 

After finding a specific need in the maritime logistics industry in late 2024, we decided to focus fully on that industry in early 2025.

Stealth Startup

Refining my opinions on where the world is going, and learning what people will need more of :)

Building something new

Community Hacked

Founded and ran a side project with a few of my friends where we built a global community of the best community builders & experts. 

Ran many events where I interviewed the global heads of community from companies like Salesforce, Notion, Peloton, Airtable, Canva, Zendesk and many more.

Co-Creator / Founder

Startup Grind

CSO for Startup Grind global: the world’s largest startup community across 600 locations in 120 countries.

Helped thousands of pre-seed and seed-stage startups gain access to funding, mentorship and customers.

Closed several $million in sales relating to innovation and sponsorship with some of the world's biggest tech brands like Microsoft and Snowflake during my time there.

We also ran the largest tech conference in Silicon Valley, hosting speakers like the founders/CEOs of Google, OpenAI, Zoom, Airbnb, LinkedIn, Uber, A16Z, Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital and many more.

Chief Strategy Officer

VP Sales & Startups

Director, Startup Programs

SG DAO

Built a DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) that aimed to be the world's first truly community-owned accelerator. 

Pivoted into a community-backed micro VC run by Startup Grind that invested into pre-seed and seed-stage companies. 

We made 8 investments before I left in Feb '23

Co-Founder & Co-Lead

Multiple startups

Angel investor in companies like Bevy (https://www.bevy.com/), Odin (https://www.joinodin.com/), Goodloans (https://www.goodloans.co/) and Paus (https://paus.tv/).

Angel Investor (temporarily paused)

Freshworks Inc. (formerly Freshdesk)

Led Freshservice (Freshworks's fastest-growing product) GTM in UK&I

One of the 5 winners of the first ever President’s Club in 2017.

Freshworks IPO'd in 2021 on NASDAQ under the ticker FRSH

Head of UK & I Sales

2nd hire in EMEA

Worked on developing and executing the go-to-market

Accenture

Front-to-back systems transformation project at UBS Investment Bank and blockchain research project for a presentation to the board of HSBC UK.

Won multiple awards as a top-performing Analyst at both Accenture and UBS Investment Bank.

Business & Systems Integration Consultant

iris worldwide

Worked on the ideation and development phases of projects for the Adidas and Durex accounts.

Account Management Intern

Co-Founder at Playmaker

Empowering shipping agents from across the world to transform their operations with AI.

Learn more at https://www.portday.com/

Co-Founder/Co-Lead

Aiming to be the world's first community-owned accelerator, and has recently pivoted into being an LP in the new community-backed Micro VC run by Startup Grind that is investing into pre-seed and seed-stage companies.

Raashid Navlakhi

Jigsaw Thinking

As CEO, I lead the team at Jigsaw to realise Vision 2025: Fuel 10,000 Indian, non-tech, self-starters to start, sustain & scale their entrepreneurial journeys. 

As Head Business Coach, I guide Jigsaw's self-starter community to clarify strategy, build systems & evolve as entrepreneurs through Labs@Jigsaw.

Founder

I For Indya

A social impact project where I designed practical learning experiences for teenagers. We sourced challenges from NGOs and equipped teenagers to solve these challenges using Design Thinking.

Top-Tier Investment Bank

• Project Management
Responsible for the delivery of 100+ milestones across 7 business areas with a budget of approximately CHF 8 million.

• Team Lead
Co-led a team of 6 Adoptions Analysts to deliver 100+milestones; the analysts reported status on a daily basis and I was the escalation point in case of any financial, technical or process issues affecting delivery. Created a dashboard that has been used as the template for reporting progress with Integration for 500+ milestones.

• Stakeholder Management
Developed strong, long-term and trust based relationships with Integration Leads of 7 business areas, Programme Manager, Project Management Office and IT Delivery Leads at the Investment Bank. 

• Governance Process
Established governance processes with each of the 7 business areas; created and maintained an Actions Log and Risk-Issue-Dependency Log to ensure transparency, proactive management and standardised status reporting.

• Solution Design
Involved with designing and implementing solutions based on use-case development and testing; established self as an expert of the data landscape (including system architecture).

Integration Project Manager

Formed part of a three person Reference Data work stream team that worked on the R&C Strategic Re-platforming Programme.

• Reference Data Test Coordination Lead 
This included programme level support of multiple cycles of Integration Testing, Migration activities, P2P Testing and Performance Testing – key responsibilities included the management of testing environments, ensuring data availability and issue resolution (central trade booking system and downstream consumers).

• Counterparty Adoptions Lead
This entailed adopting 20+ downstream consumers to Reference Data to consume appropriate Account, Client and Legal Entity data. Each adoption went through the Plan, Analyse, Design, Build, Test and Deployment phases and thus gave me valuable hands-on experience of the front to back process of System Integration projects. This role also involved managing the other Adoptions Analysts and creating an automated Adoptions Dashboard for reporting purposes.

• Business Analyst with PMO responsibilities
This included bi-weekly status reporting to senior clients, formally managing all Risks, Issues and Dependencies and maintaining the Project Plan. Automated and streamlined the tracking and reporting process via SharePoint and Excel to save the team 3 hours per week.

Previously worked on two different projects at the Top-Tier Investment Bank:

• Client Data Confidentiality
This involved working independently with a Director on mapping the global onboarding processes of clients across for different regions and identifying commonalities across geographies.

• Undisclosed Principles
This project involved working with a Manager on the Target Operating Model for a particular process within the bank. This included setting up a governance structure, making incremental changes to systems, creating a short, medium and long-term plan for the overall solution and assessing the impact to people involved. It combined the principles of Lean Six Sigma and Software Oriented Architecture.

Test Coordination and Integration Lead

• Rewards and Recognition
Accenture 'People Oscar' Nominee in 2014 and 2015, Accenture 'Superstar Analyst' Nominee in 2015, Client 'Performance Star' Nominee for 4 quarters and positive feedback from clients across the rank structure.

• Knowledge Transfer
Established myself as an expert in the data landscape (including system architecture) and Know Your Customer processes; ran 25+ Knowledge Transfer sessions with several Accenture staff and clients.

• Social Lead 
Responsible for organising 5 quarterly Account Updates, 10+ social events and co-organised an all-day offsite that included external speakers and Accenture Leadership (the Accenture Account consists of 300+ members).

• Personal Development Champion
Responsible for driving a pilot 360 degree feedback initiative (100+ participants) and conducted Personal Financial Planning training sessions for 40+ attendees.

• Performance Management
Organised multiple 'mock laddering' sessions for 25+ participants (Analysts, Consultants and Managers) to demonstrate how the Accenture Performance Management process works.

• Client Proposals
Co-created 3 client proposals (including 1 formal Request For Proposal) that were submitted to client Managing Directors.

• Capital Markets Digital Enablement
Authored an internal Viewpoint on the 'Digital Disruption of Capital Markets' that received positive feedback and was published to the entire Accenture Capital Markets practice; also presented a summary of the paper to 20+ Accenture staff; created digital postcards and Prezi-based infographics.

• Process Excellence Team
Co-created a Lean Six Sigma introductory pack that is used by Accenture staff on related projects.

• Accenture People
As a Buddy I had quarterly catch-ups with 3 new Accenture Analysts to provide guidance and advice; as a Recruitment Buddy, I assisted 10+ applicants through the recruitment process.

Technology Consultant

This six-month Industrial Placement was split across two projects that entailed different responsibilities.

• Universal Credit - Department of Work & Pensions
As part of the User Experience team, I worked on creating Wireframes and Prototypes of the online portal. These were used to develop several Use Cases and formed the basis of User Acceptance Testing. We were in charge of visualising the overall design to create a pleasing User Interface. A key aspect of the job was to ensure that the Build and Test teams received a clear picture of what the end product should look like visually and how it should work functionally.

• IT Transformation Project - Leading Global Travel Agency
As part of the Scheduling team, I worked on coordinating the various teams (branches, phone suppliers, desktop suppliers) involved in the IT Transformation of branches across the UK. A key aspect of this job was to automate the scheduling process to reduce the amount of effort it took to plan weekly activities. Several contingency plans needed to be formulated, as this was in the build up to and during the London Olympics and Paralympics.

Analyst

Feedback Business Consulting Services Pvt Ltd

The company specialises in market research, business advisory and execution assistance in the Indian market. I had the pleasure of working very closely with the Founder, Chairman and Managing Director on projects that he undertook personally at the firm.

• Social Media Strategy
This involved researching and analysing the potential of leveraging Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for brand awareness and brand enhancement purposes.

• Small Business Assistance
Included researching the Small Business Administration service offered in the US, comparing it to the regional equivalents in India, identifying the gaps between the two and a strategy on how the concept can be implemented in the Indian context.

• Vocational Education
Comprised of researching the state of education in India, gaps in the set-up and giving recommendations through the creation of a model to the Education Minister of India.

• Unique Identification (Aadhar)
This is a nation-wide scheme of providing a unique identity card to every citizen in India to facilitate direct benefit payments amongst other things. We researched the availability and potential of various electronic terminals across the country to add value to this service.

Executive Assistant to the Chairman

1. Founder and Business Coach, Jigsaw Thinking
2. Guided ~1000 self-starters (and counting) towards creative & financial freedom
3. Forever Entrepreneur, Business Coach & Board Game junkie
4. Ex-Consultant at Accenture
5. Ex-Social Entrepreneur 
6. Superpowers: Drive | Clarity | Structure

taplio

The Battle

Alex Gordon-Furse

Raashid Navlakhi

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