In this episode, Chris speaks with Sam Atkinson, CEO and Co-Founder of Swap: one of BNVT Capital's earliest investments and now a global agentic e-commerce platform powering over 1,000 brands like Paul Smith, Cubitts and Sirplus. Sam reflects on building Swap from a small London team focused on returns management into a full operating system for cross-border commerce, and why the company's boldest chapter is just beginning.
The conversation explores how solving one of the hardest problems in e-commerce cross-border returns gave Swap the foundation to expand into payments, shipping, customs, demand forecasting, and tax compliance. Sam unpacks the launch of Swap's Agentic Storefront, why Shopify remains a partner even as Swap carves out its own lane, and what it took to scale a UK-born platform into a US-led growth story: with $120M in projected annualized revenue and a $100M Series C from Iconic and DST to fuel what comes next.
Key Takeaways:
- How starting with cross-border returns gave Swap the credibility and infrastructure to build a full e-commerce operating system
- What the Agentic Storefront is, why it's unlike anything else on the market, and how it opens up an entirely new customer base in North America
- Why Swap views Shopify as a long-term partner — and where the two diverge on the front-end experience
- How Sam's experience running his own e-commerce brand and working at McKinsey and Swedish neobank Juni shaped Swap's product vision
- What it took to scale from the UK to a global operation with nearly 50% of revenue now in the US
- Why hiring close friends as early employees was one of Sam's best decisions — and how his wife Jean keeps him grounded through it all
- Sam's take on the benevolent vs. disruptor question: "We need to do the disrupting first to be able to be benevolent"
What is Benevolent Disruptors?
"Benevolent Disruptors” is a podcast series, co-hosted by the Managing Partners of BNVT Capital, Rory Mounsey-Heysham and Chris Corbishley. In this series we interview leading founders, investors, allocators, and regulators on the role of business and technology in society.
As individuals, business and governments grapple with the implications of a rapidly evolving technological landscape, Benevolent Disruptors provides a more optimistic view on how technology changes lives. We learn from the inspirational stories of those building big businesses tackling our most pressing challenges.