overview
Owen grew up in rural Essex, before moving to Oxford to study. Prior to True, he briefly worked at Capital Enterprise, assisting in the allocation of European Regional Development Fund grants to support SMEs through the Covid pandemic.
meet Owen
Why did you choose True?
The intersection of True’s unique model and inviting culture made the prospect of working here extremely exciting.
How would you describe your job to a five-year-old?
Professional Googler.
What do you love most — and least — about your job?
I love feeling that we are constantly at the forefront of innovation and able to directly leverage these innovations to create tangible value across an extremely broad array of varied companies and projects. I suppose the only downside of this is the struggle to keep across the ever-evolving landscape.
Name an idea or company that reimagined a business or industry — one you wish you’d thought of.
Sorare — the NFT fantasy football trading card game. They just raised $680m!
Which person or people helped shape and inspire who you are today?
Probably my sisters for always setting my parents’ expectations outrageously high and forcing me to work hard.
true cv
Owen’s expertise at True:
Owen gets to work across the Innovation Team’s events programme as well as a variety of exciting projects for our partners, including Warner Bros, Johnson & Johnson, ABF, Direct Wines Diageo, John Lewis & Partners and Primark.
True stories featuring Owen
insight
Q-Commerce: our quick takeaways on a rapidly evolving sector
Not a day seems to go by that a New ‘Quick’ grocery operator doesn't raise funds - launching in a new country or forming a new partnership. In just the past few weeks Berlin-based Gorillas has raised $1bn, and launched a partnership with Tesco.
Insight
Buying into the Metaverse through a tour of Truetopia
For the past two years most of our community interactions have been virtual – but none were quite like the event we hosted at the end of 2021. We jumped into the Metaverse with our guests to take them around a ‘Truetopia’ of virtual shops, streets and leisure spots as our avatars got together in the virtual auditorium, to discuss realistic opportunities for brands and retailers in our community.
Insight
The Metaverse: a series of opportunities
The Metaverse has well and truly landed. All things 'metaverse' have reached fever pitch since Facebook's rebranding to Meta. The October 2021 announcement not only set out a vision for what a fully immersive digital world powered by VR would look like for the company's 2.89 billion monthly active users, but also confirmed a colossal investment in making this a reality – $10 billion this year alone. Since then, everyone's been talking about it.
relevant people
Aarthi Thangavel
Associate, Innovation
“Aarthi is fantastic to work with — she is super friendly, helpful and engaged in everything she is part of. I particularly appreciate her getting involved in our Growth deal flow meetings to ensure we’re well joined-up across True.”
