2 decades of digital transformation with data, analytics & experimentation

Experienced managing data and analytics teams to deliver business optimisation value.

Experience in:
- Ecommerce leadership
- Digital trading performance & optimisation
- Budget and target management 
- Data management
- Digital analytics implementation & Management
- Marketing analytics
- Martech integration
- Website optimisation

Oliver Paton

Get 2x performance from Klaviyo flows | Revenue tracking for Shopify brands | Founder and CEO @ Littledata

Edward founded Littledata to make it ridiculously easy to connect sales, marketing and customer data. Top DTC brands around the world trust Littledata’s smart connections for accurate ecommerce analytics. Since launching our first Shopify app in 2017, Littledata has empowered thousands of data-driven brands to make better decisions to accelerate growth.

Edward started Littledata after experiencing first-hand the pain of getting accurate ecommerce data as an advisor for MADE.com and JD Williams group.  Before that he founded Teachable.net, a marketplace for teachers to share digital education resources.

He graduated in Psychology and Philosophy from Magdalen College, Oxford and after working for Accenture, the UK Government Digital Service and others he's always been fascinated by how technology can improve how we think and live.

Edward lives in Berkshire and works in London, and when not at a laptop can be found cycling, walking, skiing, or shooting.

Edward Upton

The App Store is coming to ChatGPT.

Glen Coates moving from Shopify to OpenAI as Head of App Platform is exhibit A.

As VP Product, Glen spent years building the developer + partner ecosystem that turned Shopify into the OS of commerce.

Nick Turley (Head of ChatGPT) has been explicit about making ChatGPT an “operating system” with third-party apps living inside the chat.

And to copy Shopify's success that operating system needs to be built around checkout & payments.

Which means ChatGPT needs to become the place where intent becomes transaction.

“Compare these hoodies” → Buy 🛍️ 
“Reorder my supplements” → Buy 🛍️ 
“Book that flight” → Buy 🛍️ 
“Find the best offer” → Buy 🛍️ 

That’s why this hire matters.

Glen knows how Shopify made an ecosystem around Shopify's checkout.

Now I'd expect him to bring the same playbook to ChatGPT:

1. Make it insanely easy for partners to build (APIs, SDK, templates)
2. Make distribution inside ChatGPT feel like “the default”
3. Then take a share of the resulting payments (and own checkout)

It's taking a share of payments that has made Shopify so valuable, and I see building the app ecosystem as a way to challenge that dominance in commerce.

Founder and CEO @ Littledata | The Data Layer for Shopify

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There’s a moment in every agency’s growth where the conversations change.  

Early on, it’s about winning work.  
Later, it’s about defending decisions.  

Last week at the Ecommerce Agency Growth workshop, that shift was clear.  

What I valued most was the conversations.
Because in day-to-day agency work, those conversations are compressed. 

There isn’t always time to step back and interrogate the bigger questions.  

The roundtables gave us that.  

Direct questions on product direction. Clear competitor comparisons. Positioning. Honest feedback.  

As a founder, that’s the kind of room I want to be in.  

A few themes were consistent.  

As agencies scale, growth gets more complex. More channels. More scrutiny. More competition. Higher expectations.  

The work is now fully cross-functional.  

Creative, paid, lifecycle, CRO, and finance all own the same revenue number.  

That should create alignment.  

But when ads, analytics, and marketing automations don’t align, momentum slows. Because you don't have confidence in the numbers.

What struck me most last week was how universal this felt.  
Whether the agency was 10 people or 100, the tracking confusion sounded the same.  

Massive thanks to everyone who came, challenged, and shared.  
And to Klaviyo, Rivo, and Tapcart for getting everyone together.  

Special thanks to Rachel Jacobs and Will Lynch for hosting. I’m looking forward to working even more closely with the wider EAG community in 2026.  

If you’re running an agency, here’s the question I’d bring to your next client QBR:  

“If you had complete confidence in the data, would your strategy look different?” 

That’s the problem we’re trying to solve at Littledata: being the core infrastructure agencies and brands can build on when they’re tired of not knowing which numbers to trust.  

Rooms like this matter.  

They create space for the conversations that don’t fit into a 30-minute status call.

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Oliver Paton

Edward Upton

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The Battle

Oliver Paton

Edward Upton

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Edward Upton's LinkedIn Performance

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