Elian Pres-Gurwits | Source | Founder at Gently
Elian Pres-Gurwits
Elian is a logistics and shipping entrepreneur with extensive experience launching and scaling ventures across the globe.
He raised $72 million to launch Glossybox in the US, EU and Asia as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Rocket Internet, serving as president and managing director. After leaving Glossybox in 2015 to pursue an MBA at Harvard Business School, it was acquired by The Hut Group in 2017.
After graduating, Elian joined Ray Dalio’s investment management firm Bridgewater Associates as a senior manager. He helped Dalio launch his new venture, Principles, and oversaw trading and account management departments. He has also served as a senior advisor to businesses such as Dr Smile, the venture capital firm Entrepreneur First, and Schoeller Group.
He's passionate about driving economic development and encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs, having served as one of the youngest judges at Venture for America Fellowship.
Gently is Elian’s newest venture, a disruptive logistics company he co-founded with Harvard classmate Anas Aljumaily in January 2023.
Born and raised in Germany, Elian has lived and worked in nine different countries and is fluent in German, Russian, and English. He currently splits his time between Los Angeles and Berlin.
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Gently
Founder
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“Decentralizing the supply chain will drive growth and unlock new opportunities for local retailers, last-mile delivery and entrepreneurs,” he said. “The ‘gig economy’ has failed to live up to the hype, and bringing fulfillment centers closer to consumers provides job security and long-term certainty for those in last-mile delivery.”
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“Big players are creating the next step in the evolution of the logistics experience, and that means efficient logistics that are customer-focused and fast, and not only logistics as delivery, but logistics as returns,” Gurwits said. “We saw that retailers with existing logistics capabilities became the only ones in position to leverage those capabilities and move away from their business model of selling products to being logistics or service providers. This is the major threat I see today.”