Jan 13, 2020
Sapna Shah C93, W93, is an angel investor, retail expert
and three-time entrepreneur. Through Red Giraffe Advisors,
Sapna makes angel and early-stage seed investments in retail
tech, fashion tech and e-commerce startups. Select investments
include: The Wing, Stantt,
Findmine, Swoonery, Dough, Modalyst, Monica + Andy and Iterate
Studio.
Sapna is also the founder of Retail X Series, a retail startup boot
camp program for pre-seed stage founders who are
revolutionizing the future of retail. Retail X holds monthly events
with experts covering topics from customer acquisition, to
financial modeling, to seed stage fundraising, targeted
specifically to early stage B2B and DTC retail founders.
Sapna advises start-ups and judges in the startup competitions at
the Wharton School, NYU Stern and Columbia Business School. She has
also mentored at a number of New York-based accelerators including
Friends of eBay, Grand Central Tech, Monarq, XRC Labs, New York
Fashion Tech Lab and Trendseeder. Sapna has also served on the
Board of Directors of New York Angels, one of the most active angel
groups in the world.
Previously, Sapna co-founded and led Retail Eye Partners, a
successful independent Wall Street equity research firm. At Retail
Eye, Sapna assessed the monthly and quarterly performance of major
retailers in the specialty, big box and department store sectors
through intensive channel checks and analysis. Sapna also
co-founded and launched a
menswear e-commerce retailer, Mind the Chap, and led the Marketing
and Web Development areas of the company. Prior to Retail Eye
Partners, Sapna was Executive Director of Strategy and Customer
Insight at Linens & Things, Inc., responsible for customer
targeting and segmentation, market and consumer research,
corporate
strategic planning, new business rollouts and competitive
benchmarking. Prior to Linens & Things, Sapna was Director of
Strategic Planning &; New Business Development at Ann Taylor,
where she worked on launching Ann Taylor’s e-commerce site,
developing a color cosmetics line, visioning the store of the
future and improving store operations. Sapna also has
experience at Gap, Inc. Previous to her career in retail, Sapna
worked in investment banking at Punk, Ziegel &; Knoell and at
Morgan Stanley as a credit
analyst.
Sapna received her B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School as
well as a B.A. in East Asian Studies from the College of Arts &
Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her
M.B.A. from Columbia Business School. She is a member of the
Women’s
Forum of New York.