Links

• Sendd.store (Live Product + Landing Page): https://www.sendd.store/

• Sendd.market (V1 Live! New website): https://www.sendd.market/

Traction (March 2026)

• 93 cumulative stores on Sendd.store (+79% MoM, up from 52 in February)

• 41 new stores onboarded in March alone

• 136 orders processed across 25 stores, in 4 currencies (NZD, THB, AUD, USD)

• ~$2,191 NZD + ฿143.70 THB + $1 USD in transaction volume across the platform

• $13.57 USD in Sendd platform revenue (+351% vs prior period)

• 21 new Stripe connected accounts in March (41 cumulative; all created since Sendd.store launched on January 20th)

• $1,004.75 USD in Stripe connect payment volume in March (+290% vs prior period); Bank2Bank volume is additional and not reflected in Stripe

• 64+ marketplaces on Sendd.market waitlist (up from 47 in Feb; +36% MoM), representing 12,400+ potential storefronts

• ~52,800 total views across social channels in March, $0 paid spend

• Sendd.market V1 went live on March 31st

Summary

I was meant to Sendd this update yesterday. But Good Friday (in NZ) was massive. We did more GMV yesterday than almost the entire month of March. In one day. Insane! But more on this with the next investor update in April.

A note for new readers: If you’re receiving this update for the first time; welcome. It’s nice to have you join me in this journey; as I build in public. These updates are how I keep our community honest, informed, and close to the work. I’m glad you’re along for the ride. Also this is the first update where I’m inviting everyone I’ve connected with in my previous journey as a Founder. I’d love to meet and catch up for a coffee while I’m in the US.

In March; we nearly doubled our store count. We shipped Bank2Bank and GoSweetSpot. We got Sendd.market V1 live. And real money started flowing through the platform in a way that feels fundamentally different compared to month 1 with Sendd store (Feb). 136 orders across 25 stores in 4 currencies. TEDxVUW sold tickets. An artist who had never sold online before listed 30+ works and made their first sales. These aren’t test transactions anymore. This is commerce happening on Sendd every week, across multiple stores, in multiple countries.

But the best story this month isn’t a metric. It’s Antz and Connor; two Wellington artists who had never sold their art before. It was too hard and too expensive. Sendd changed that. Both joined, started selling prints, and Antz documented the journey in a content series called “Paying My Rent as an Artist.” That series alone drove 15+ organic artist referrals through social content. One gallery reached out wanting a store; we converted to a marketplaces waitlist instead. Another gallery from an earlier conversation is now actively recruiting their 250-artist network to Sendd. Antz is launching his own marketplace as the next chapter. This entire loop; artist joins, content drives referrals, curators emerge, sellers become curators, network compounds; came from a single conversation. And Sendd.market wasn’t even live yet.

What makes this month feel significant isn’t any single feature or metric. It’s the convergence. Every piece we’ve been building; storefronts, payments, shipping, marketplaces; is now working together. Ten weeks ago Sendd.store didn’t exist. Now we have 93 stores, an integrated shipping partner, the cheapest payment method in New Zealand, and a live marketplace product. The compounding has begun. We are actually the best way for anyone in New Zealand to sell something now.

And we’re not slowing down. On April 14 I fly to the US for over 6 weeks; LA first (April 14–28, with a possible SF trip), then New York (April 29 – May 16), Florida (May 16–20), and DFW Texas through to the end of May. The mission: sign up American stores and marketplaces across every city. The thesis has always been that what works in New Zealand should work everywhere; the pain points are universal, the product is already international from day one. This trip is where we test that thesis with real US customers and real US marketplace operators.

While the original plan was to raise capital during this trip; and the capital raising materials are ready to go, many meetings lined up already. The marketplace traction is too tempting to not focus on; we have a 100% close rate on every marketplace conversation we’ve had. Due to this we’re seriously considering prioritizing marketplace partnerships over active fundraising during the US trip. The logic is simple: if every marketplace conversation converts, the fastest way to build an undeniable business is to have as many of those conversations as possible. We’ll still take the investor meetings already lined up, and if the right terms and strategic alignment present themselves, we’ll raise. But the default plan is to let the traction do the talking and focus on what’s compounding fastest.

For the US market entry, the playbook is the same as NZ: own the local rails. That means integrating Venmo, Zelle, and Cash App for payments, partnering with the leading US shipping carrier, and seeding the first 10 US marketplace curators using the playbook that’s proving to work in NZ.

Product Updates

What We Shipped

Sendd.market V1 — LIVE (March 31st) This is the big one. After months of demos, waitlist growth, and deep conversations with marketplace operators, Sendd.market V1 is live. We’ve also launched a brand new Sendd.market website; check it out at https://www.sendd.market/ Access is currently restricted: you need an access code to sign up, which we’re giving to marketplaces from our waitlist. This is deliberate. We want to work closely with the first sets of marketplaces, really hone the product, and refine the experience before opening it wide. 64 marketplaces are on the waitlist representing 12,400+ sellers. We will start onboarding them, one by one, and learn fast.

Bank2Bank Payments (NZ) — LIVE A flat-rate 30c NZD bank-to-bank payment method is now available for New Zealand sellers. A seller taking a $500 order pays 30 cents. No percentage fee, no Stripe margin. We’re also waiving our 1% platform fee on all Bank2Bank orders. This makes Sendd the cheapest way for any business in New Zealand to collect money; full stop.

GoSweetSpot Shipping Integration (NZ/AU) — LIVE Every Sendd seller in New Zealand and Australia now has access to a native, deeply integrated shipping experience built into the core product. GoSweetSpot handles domestic and trans-Tasman shipping with real-time rates and label generation. This is the kind of functionality Shopify charges $2,400+ USD per month to unlock. For Sendd sellers it’s built in from day one. This also proves our localization playbook: find and deeply integrate the best local shipping provider and the cheapest local payment method in every market we enter. Own the rails. Localize the experience. NZ is now set.

Real Transaction Volume Flowing 136 orders. 25 stores. 4 currencies. The platform is alive.

TEDxVUW is now our #1 seller by volume; overtaking antz.arts just in the last few days. Double Crème Bakehouse, ConnorJaredArt, Rumi’s Store, Denika Mead Author, all live and transacting, we are considering adding a discovery or leaderboard feature for Sellers.

Total transaction volume across the platform: ~$2,191 NZD + ฿143.70 THB + $1 USD. Sendd’s platform revenue (our 1% cut): $13.57 USD; up 351% from the prior period. The number is small, but it’s real, it’s growing, and it doesn’t yet include Bank2Bank volume which sits outside Stripe entirely. It’s also worth noting: of our 93 stores, most are using Sendd as an online presence or portfolio storefront and aren’t yet actively selling. The transaction volume you see is coming from a fraction of our base. As more sellers enable payments and the 12,000+ seller pipeline unlocks when their marketplaces go live, the revenue trajectory changes materially.

Help Center — LIVE Shawn has done an awesome job writing up detailed step-by-step help articles, and the Help Center is now merged and live on Sendd.store. This is one of those things that doesn’t make headlines but matters enormously for customer self-service and reducing support load as we scale.

Blog Layout — Fixed All articles are now discoverable. A small but important UX fix that was overdue. We also released 100s of smaller improvements and tweaks that make a material difference to sellers but not included here.

What Moved

Reviews: Pushed for later. We want to get this right; reviews are a key trust-building mechanism for both customers and products, and rushing it would defeat the purpose. Remains a priority but other items took precedence. Design & customer work is still being done to get this right!

API V1: Not yet public, though the functionality is effectively live via our Sendd MCP. The MCP was submitted to OpenAI but got rejected for some linting issues; we’ll fix and resubmit shortly. That said, you can still use the Sendd MCP right now by adding it manually into ChatGPT or Claude; and if you’re keen to try it, it’s pretty powerful. You can manage your entire store, create products, pull orders, and more; all through a conversation with AI. The underlying capability is fully there; the official marketplace listing to OpenAI & Claude is what’s pending. We will release a video and an article on this shortly on how to add it in the meantime.

Reviews on software review platforms (TrustPilot, G2, etc.): Didn’t have the bandwidth to push on this. However, we’re receiving amazing organic messages from customers which we’ll share below. The authentic signal is there; we just need to channel it into the right platforms.

Operations & Admin

March was also a heavy month of documentation and paperwork; unsexy but essential.

We completed our first tax filing and full financial statements for Sendd for FY2025. Alongside that, we worked through the full tax and compliance picture across both the US and NZ entities; making sure we’re handling IP, transfer pricing, and a range of other cross-border considerations correctly. We also set up the nominees company properly and will be working through the transfer of the team (shareholders) into that structure. And we applied for the Sendd trademark.

None of this makes for exciting reading, but it all matters. We now have a clean corporate structure, proper financials, and a model that works going forward. So alongside all our capital raising materials, we’re walking into investor conversations with everything buttoned up. It’s not a fun job or the best use of my time. However these things matter and I’m glad we have sorted most of them, with some small clean up bits remaining. We aren’t building Sendd to be a quick exit or a small result. I love what we are doing, the impact it already has on customers and the impact it can have with the vision being realized. I also strongly believe; everyday investors via public markets having access to high growth companies is important. So at Sendd we will be as transparent as possible. One day everyday investors (our own customers) can own a part of Sendd through a public market.

Growth & Content

Sendd.store Instagram (1 Mar – 30 Mar):

• 38,837 views

• 1,200 interactions

• 102 new followers

• 83 content pieces shared

• 70.2% of views from non-followers; organic discovery continues to work

• 11,254 accounts reached

• Reels drove 61.2% of views

• Top content: “Newtown” (4.8K), “Followers” (3.4K), “Bluedoor” (2.4K), “Connor” (2.1K)

• Top cities: Wellington (29.4%), Lower Hutt (9.7%), Auckland (8.7%), Hastings (3.0%)

• Profile activity: 1,775 (+7.3% vs prior period)

• Profile visits: 1,682 (+7.8%)

• External link taps: 93

Adi Personal Instagram (1 Mar – 30 Mar):

• 13,934 views

• 138 interactions

• 22 new followers

• 44 content pieces shared

• 1,088 accounts reached (+15.1%)

• Stories drove 80.1% of views

Combined reach: ~52,800 views across all channels. $0 paid spend.

Newtown Festival & CubaDupa: We had a great presence at both the Newtown Festival and CubaDupa in Wellington; awesome for brand visibility and community connection. Cyrus’s content from the festivals performed really well and was a highlight of the month.

We missed our 80K target, but the picture is more nuanced than the final number suggests. Mid-month we peaked at ~67K combined (57K Sendd + 10K personal) and were genuinely tracking toward our target. Then content output dropped sharply in the second half of the month due to team capacity issues (more on this in The Bad). The formula is building; the challenge is consistency and having someone fully dedicated to executing it week in, week out.

One clear gap we’ve identified: educational content. The content that performs best and drives real conversions is stuff like “How to run a successful handmade crochet business using Sendd”; educational, product-forward, and directly relevant to our target customer. We realized once someone understands the power of Sendd, it’s not a matter of Sendd vs XYZ product. How this is explained to people matters; as a feature by itself means nothing. The context of that feature in their specific business means the world. This is the content category we need to invest in heavily in April and beyond.

The Good

• 100% close rate on marketplace conversations. Every marketplace we’ve had a real conversation with wants to launch on Sendd. Every single one. The product-market fit signal here is deafening.

• International from day one; including 2 US stores signed up organically. Stores are live across 6 countries; NZ, Australia, US, UK, SE Asia; with zero paid spend and zero US-specific outreach. Before Sendd even has a US local payment integration or a single paid ad, the product is already travelling on its own.

• 100+ investors are now following our updates. This is purely organic growth from word of mouth; and it’s only the beginning.

• A PTA from a local high school reached out. They initially wanted our ticketing product for school events. After seeing the platform they got excited about using it for school donations AND creating a marketplace for their upcoming school fair. This is exactly the kind of organic expansion we designed for; one use case pulls people into the full product suite.

The Bad

Edmund and I had a meaningful conversation and we agreed he had too many things on his plate and Sendd couldn’t be his key priority. We’ll miss him and his insights, but we’re excited to see his journey as a founder and content creator. At the same time, Cyrus went viral with his own content & off the back of the Newtown Festival and has had a field of inbounds for his own agency alongside Edmund. While Cyrus is full time with us and we’ve been super supportive of his journey as a creator, we aren’t able to pay him a competitive full-time content creator salary; so his own work has been a way to bridge that gap. The reality is we need someone fully focused on Sendd with no distractions, because the cost of inconsistency for us is high. We’re having internal conversations about taking on more financial load personally to increase pay for a dedicated full-time content creator; whether that’s Cyrus stepping up into a bigger role or someone new. We’ll be publishing this role in April: full-time content creator with big equity upside.

We need to be able to hire and retain full-time team members. No distractions. The days we are all in the same space. Eg Good Friday at my place yesterday. Always end up being massive days. So when we can, we would love to have the team in person and really hustling.

Previous Goals Status (March Targets from Feb Update)

Sendd.store:

• Fix blog layout so all articles are discoverable: Done ✅

• Merge Help Center live onto Sendd.store: Done ✅ (Shawn smashed it on the help articles)

• Ship Reviews: Not Done (still in design stage; want to get this right)

• Release API V1: Not public yet (functionality live via MCP; OpenAI rejected MCP for linting; fixing and resubmitting)

• 100+ cumulative stores: Not Done (93; close but missed)

• 100+ reviews on software review platforms: Not Done (didn’t have the bandwidth)

• Ship Bank2Bank: Done ✅

• Ship GoSweetSpot: Done ✅

Sendd.market:

• Demo V4 live (management layer): Pushed for later; we’re done with demos. We’ll build out real marketplaces and showcase them as use cases instead.

• Sendd.market V1 live by end of March: Done ✅ (March 31st!)

• 10 new marketplace signups: Done ✅ (17+ new; from 47 to 64, with 12,400+ sellers represented)

Growth & Content:

• 80K+ total views, $0 paid spend: Not Done (~52.8K views)

• Build-in-public and founder journey content: Ongoing

• Seller spotlight content: Ongoing

US & Fundraising:

• Finalize Seed round materials: Fine Tuning Remaining

• US meetings prep: Done ✅ (flights booked, April 14 departure)

• Sendd.market live before April 14 departure: Done ✅

April Execution Goals

Sendd.store

• 130 cumulative stores (40% MoM growth)

• Release Sendd.store dashboard

• Fix MCP linting issues and resubmit to OpenAI

• Release Reviews

• 100+ reviews on TrustPilot, G2, and other review platforms

Sendd.market

• Onboard 2 marketplaces

• Release Sendd.market dashboard and orders section

• 75+ marketplaces on waitlist

• 10+ US marketplace signups

• Build out live marketplaces as use cases to showcase the product

US Expansion (April 14th – June 1st)

• LA (Apr 14–28, possible SF side trip) → NY (Apr 29 – May 16) → Florida (May 16–20) → DFW Texas

• 10+ US stores onboarded

• 5+ US marketplace pilot conversations

• Validate NZ assumptions in the US market: are the pain points the same? Does the value prop resonate? Do referrals compound the same way?

• Prioritize marketplace conversations; field inbound investor meetings

Growth & Content

• 80K+ total views (carrying forward the target, with US trip content providing fresh fuel)

• Publish and fill full-time content creator role (full-time pay + big equity upside)

• Launch educational content series (e.g., “How to run a successful [X] business using Sendd”)

• US founder journey content series

• $0 paid spend maintained

Financials

• February burn: ~$8,500 NZD

• March burn: ~$15,500 NZD (increase driven by relocating Dev to Bangkok to co-locate with Tum & Legal + Accounting cost)

• Runway: Sustainable at sub $10,000 burn rate. Supported via reserves + founder top-up.

• The burn increase was a deliberate investment in engineering velocity & making sure we were structurally set up. Having both full-time engineers in person together has meaningfully accelerated product delivery already.

🎯 Primary Ask

Warm introductions to US-based marketplace operators, community organizations, and investors.

Marketplace partners we want to meet:

• Organizations that aggregate sellers or creators (associations, co-ops, creator networks)

• Communities with niche vertical audiences (fitness, beauty, food, crafts, gaming)

• Anyone who has explored building a marketplace and been quoted $100K+ for custom software

Investors we want to meet:

• Seed-stage investors who back founder-led, infrastructure-first commerce businesses

• Anyone with deep ties to marketplaces, e-commerce, or payments (ex-Shopify, Etsy, Stripe, Amazon)

• Investors who understand that the next wave of commerce is community-curated, not centrally controlled

• 📅 Book a call with me; whether you’re a marketplace operator, a potential partner, or an investor who wants to chat

Thank you for the continued trust and support.

Best,

The Sendd Team; Adi, Dev, Tum, Cyrus, Shawn, Ben, Kenia, Vlad, Jackie, Maria.

PS: Vlog 2 is live! Shawn edit!

PPS: After ~18 months as Entrepreneur in Residence at Victoria University, I’ve officially wrapped up the volunteer role. We grew the community from 0 to 120+ unfunded founders based out of The Atom space; something I’m incredibly proud of. Leaving it in great hands with Jack, Alistair & Parisa stepping in as the next EIRs, plus Aaron, Dave and Ralph as the first ever Investors in Residence. Plus Tania being 30 hours a week! So grateful for the community and to have played a part in building it! What a chapter. Now, full Sendd.

The Trajectory 🚀

Six weeks ago, Sendd.store didn’t exist.

Two weeks ago, it was probably a top 20 e-commerce product in New Zealand. Last week, top 10. By next week, we will be the number one product for sellers in this country. I can say this with full confidence as our value prop in the market is becoming undeniable and hard for sellers to ignore.

We are faster to sign up, easier to onboard, and easier to use than anything else on the market. We have no subscription fee. And with our 30c NZD Bank2Bank payment method going live, we are about to become the cheapest way for any business in New Zealand to collect money; full stop. Not cheaper than Shopify. Not cheaper than Stripe. Cheaper than everything. Even when using Sendd with Stripe we only charge 1% platform fee which is better for business than any other platform in NZ.

We are about to ship GoSweetSpot shipping integration for NZ and Australia; giving every Sendd seller in the region a native, deeply integrated shipping experience built into the core product. Shopify charges $2,500+ USD per month to unlock that kind of functionality. And this is just the start: the playbook for every new market we enter is the same; find and deeply integrate the best local shipping provider and the most-used, often cheapest payment method in that region. Own the rails. Localize the experience. Make Sendd feel like it was built for that market, because it was.

Our SEO score is climbing toward 90/100. Referrals are compounding. And our marketplace product; Sendd.market; hasn’t even launched yet. When it does, it will be a step-change. Unlocking a level of distribution and curation currently limited to big teams at big brands and marketplaces. Sendd unlocks this for everyone with a sense of taste, giving them a new way to curate and monetize that ability.

This is us at five weeks. What does a year look like? What does five years look like?

The world has changed. Distribution is being rebuilt from the ground up. The platforms that win will be the ones that are fastest, cheapest, and most embedded in how commerce actually works day-to-day. We are structurally built for that world. Sendd will be the core commerce layer for what comes next.

Links:

Sendd.store (Live Product + Landing Page) https://www.sendd.store/ (Live production environment)

Sendd.market & demos https://www.sendd.market/ (Demo V3 live; try it at https://v3.sendd.market/)

Traction (February 2026)

• 52 cumulative stores onboarded on Sendd.store by end of February.

• ~14 new stores in the final week of February alone; weekly signups accelerating.

• International from day one; stores live across NZ, Australia, US, UK/Europe, and Southeast Asia, with zero paid spend.

• $841 USD in saved subscription fees for customers since V2 launch on Jan 20 (29 stores × $29 Shopify monthly fee). Tracking restarted with V2; this number grows every month they stay on Sendd. We might also start showing sellers in real time, how much they have saved on Sendd compared to XYZ other platform.

• ~61K total views across all social channels in February (+$0 paid spend), smashing our 40K target.

Product Updates (February)

What We Shipped

Equipment Rentals: Live. One of NZ’s largest event companies reached out, loved what we were building, and asked if we planned to support rentals. We did a deep-dive with them, realized we could enable it quickly, and shipped it. The result: we can save them ~$1,500/month on their current software subscription and move their sales volume onto Sendd at our 1% fee. This also opens up a completely new category of marketplace partners; any company doing equipment or asset-based hire can now run on Sendd.

Sendd MCP V1: Shipped. This is a big one. Sellers can now manage their entire Sendd store from ChatGPT or Claude. Create listings, update products, manage orders; all from a chat interface. We’re currently awaiting approval to be natively available as a connector in both stores. In the meantime, anyone who wants early access can add it manually to ChatGPT and it works today. We’ll show you how.

Collections: Heavily requested and now live. Sellers can curate their store into collections, group products, and drag-and-drop to reorder. It changes how a Sendd store feels; more intentional, more like a brand, less like a list. Example preloved sellers using this! https://sendd.store/PrelovedToReloved

Referrals: Rebuilt. The referral flow is now end-to-end. The landing page people arrive on after clicking a referral link is properly designed and informative. Referral payouts are connected and working. Example my link: https://sendd.store/r/5OYQYZ

Performance: Major upgrade. We had an artist upload 30+ listings with images at 17MB each (check out the store: https://sendd.store/antz). It brought the platform to its knees. We prioritized fixing it: images now upload and serve in an optimized way, the store is lightning fast, and the improvement lifted performance across the board. Lighthouse SEO score is now approaching 90/100. More work to do here but the foundation is solid.

Bank2Bank payments (NZ): Shipping. This is a big deal for NZ sellers. We are launching a flat-rate 30c NZD bank-to-bank payment method. A seller taking a $500 order pays 30 cents. No percentage fee, no Stripe margin, no platform cut. On top of that, we are waiving our own 1% platform fee on all orders processed via this route. A deliberate decision to put more money back in the pockets of NZ sellers. This is the kind of thing that makes Sendd impossible to ignore once sellers do the math against their current tools. Also we are grateful for the support we are seeing from the community and this is our way of giving back, locally.

Global Payouts (Stripe): Live. This functionality is in limited beta at Stripe and getting access was genuinely hard. A big thank you to Hugh Adams at Stripe, who advocated for us internally and worked hard to get us enabled. This is critical infrastructure; without it, multi-seller marketplace payouts on Sendd.market do not work. Hugh made it happen.

Apple Wallet & Google Wallet: Shipped. Buyers can now add their Sendd event tickets natively to their phone’s wallet. Easier to find, easier to scan at the door, and a much more professional attendee experience. January’s update flagged this as coming; it’s now live.

Internal Data Dashboard: Built & Live. We shipped an internal analytics tool giving us real-time visibility across the platform: store signups, store handles, transaction volume, and other key performance metrics. We can now see exactly how the platform is performing and move faster on decisions because of it.

Sendd Events Mobile App: Pending App Store Approval. We have built and submitted a native mobile app for Sendd Events. It is currently pending approval from both Apple and Google. Once live, it gives event sellers a full door management experience: scan tickets at the door via QR code, check attendees in, and even process door sales on the spot. This is a massive unlock for the events vertical; the kind of capability that currently requires separate, expensive ticketing software. We’re building it natively into Sendd. The moment it’s approved, event sellers on Sendd have a professional, end-to-end event toolkit that rivals anything on the market.

Sendd Blogs: Close to 12 articles published. Layout improvements coming; currently only top 4 featured posts display, which we’ll fix in March.

Sendd Help Center: Built and ready to go. Working through the CMS merge to bring it live on sendd.store. Soon.

What Moved

Reviews: Re-prioritized for March. Collections and performance work took the slot and were higher value.

API V1: Re-prioritized. The MCP effectively delivers the same capability for most use cases right now. Native API release still targeted for March.

Growth & Content

Instagram (Sendd.store account) 29 Jan to 27 Feb:

• 40,601 views (target was 40K ✅)

• 14,727 accounts reached (+295% vs prior period)

• 2,400 interactions

• 77 new followers

• 1,653 profile activity actions (+208%)

• 95 external link taps (+400%)

• 75.5% of views from non-followers; organic discovery working

• Reels drove 90.6% of views

• Top content: “Taylor joins” (5.9K), “Fission Project” (5.2K), “Anton” (3.2K), “New plate” (1.9K)

• Audience: 47.7% aged 18–24, 33.3% aged 25–34

• Top cities: Wellington (13.3%), Auckland (7.4%), Lower Hutt (5.3%), Christchurch (4.8%)

LinkedIn (Adi personal) February:

• 12,315 impressions (+357.5% vs prior 28 days)

• 3,977 members reached (+234.8%)

Instagram (Adi personal) 29 Jan to 27 Feb:

• 8,400 views

• 20 new followers

Total combined reach: ~61K views across all channels. Zero paid spend.

The content flywheel is working. Reels are driving the majority of discovery and the audience skew (18–34) is exactly who we want; the next generation of small business owners and creators.

Fission Project: The Night Market at The Atom

We wrapped up our 6-week sprint, The Fission Project, with a Night Market at The Atom in Wellington. A great end to the sprint and an awesome way for the community and for Sendd to have really started the year strong! I think there is something to be said about showing up everyday for 12 hours a day 6 days a week and just smashing it.

Web Traffic (30 Jan – 1 Mar)

Sendd.store

• 1,160 unique visitors

• 12,340 total requests

• 81.82% cache rate (fast by design)

• 43 GB data served; the late-February spike directly reflects the image optimization work we did after a seller uploaded 30+ listings at 17MB each. Fixed, and the platform is faster for everyone now.

Sendd.market

• 4,170 unique visitors

• 46,260 total requests

• 2 GB data served

Sendd.market is pulling 3.6x the traffic of sendd.store right now; a direct reflection of demos being actively shared and marketplace partners kicking the tyres before we go live.

Sendd.market

47 marketplaces now on the waitlist; up from 35 in January, ~34% growth in a single month.

Demo V3 is live at https://v3.sendd.market/ and it’s the most complete demo we’ve shipped. It walks through all three roles in a real marketplace: Marketplace Owner (create and brand a marketplace, set commission, curate listings from multiple providers), Service Provider (list services, manage enquiries, fulfills orders), and Buyer (browse, enquire, purchase, subscribe). For the first time, a prospective partner can see the full picture end to end.

V4 is already in progress; adding the full management layer on top. This is what closes the loop for marketplace operators: the ability to manage their marketplace, not just browse it.

The target for Sendd.market V1 going live remains end of March. Every demo iteration is getting sharper; more opinionated, closer to the real product, and generating better conversations with prospective partners. The signal from the waitlist is consistent: marketplaces want speed, governance, and reuse. They don’t want to build it themselves. We are the answer.

Financials

• January burn: ~$8,500 NZD

• February burn: ~$8,500 NZD

• Runway: Sustainable at current burn rate. Supported via reserves and founder top-up as we push toward market launch.

• Transaction volume: $300 USD processed on Sendd.store. $3 USD in platform revenue. The number is small; but growing as stores enable payments. Most of our current sellers are using Sendd as a presence on the internet or portfolio storefront, not yet as their primary sales channel. That changes as we onboard sellers who are actively selling and in cases like Antz the artist, help them sell for the first time ever because of how easy it is. The pipeline to do exactly that is building.

• Fee savings: The 29 sellers onboarded since V2 launch have already saved one month of Shopify subscriptions: 29 × $29 = $841 USD. That number compounds every single month they stay on Sendd instead.

US Trip & Seed Round

Flights are booked for April 15.

The goal is to have Sendd.market live before we land. We will be raising a Seed round in the US, on US terms, from a position of strength; with a live marketplace product, real traction, and a clear story on why Sendd wins across both commerce and marketplace infrastructure.

We have been deliberately bootstrapping to this moment. The raise will happen when the product speaks for itself. That moment is close.

If you have warm introductions to US-based investors, community-led organizations, or vertical marketplaces that could move quickly into a pilot; now is the time. Reach out directly and I’ll send you a custom intro email.

March Execution Goals

Sendd.store

• Fix blog layout so all articles are discoverable.

• Merge Help Center live onto Sendd.store.

• Ship Reviews.

• Release API V1.

• Continue onboarding push; target 100+ cumulative stores.

• 100+ reviews on software review platforms (TrustPilot, G2, and anywhere else sellers go to decide whether to try a new tool). We are starting to show up on Google and AI discovery but organic customer reviews and true opinions about Sendd will drive this much more meaningfully for us!

• Ship Bank2Bank.

• Ship GoSweetSpot.

Sendd.market

• Demo V4 live (management layer)

• Sendd.market V1 live by end of March

• 10 New marketplace signups.

Growth & Content

• March target: 80K+ total views, $0 paid spend.

• Continue build-in-public and founder journey content.

• More seller spotlight content.

US & Fundraising

• Finalize Seed round materials.

• US meetings prep.

• Sendd.market live before April 15 departure.

Primary Ask

Warm introductions to US-based investors, community organizations, or vertical marketplaces for pilot conversations ahead of our April US trip.

Ideal profiles:

• Investors who back founder-led, infrastructure-first commerce businesses.

• Organizations that already aggregate sellers or creators and want a commerce layer without building it.

• Marketplaces that want speed, governance, and reuse; not a custom build.

DM me and I’ll send a custom email you can forward directly.

Thank you for the continued trust and support.

Best, Adi & The Sendd Team

PS: I’m dropping a Vlog, I’ll add a link here once its out! Follow for more!

PPS: We bought the plate! Sendd Audi R8 coming soon! (R8 Hot wheels acquired for inspiration.)

Links:

Sendd.store (Live Product + Landing Page)

https://www.sendd.store/
(Live production environment + New public landing page)

Sendd.market & demos

https://www.sendd.market/
(Try Demo V2 via “Try a Demo”. Demo V3 is in progress. Functionality varies by demo as we iterate for specific marketplace partners.)

Traction (Since Sendd.store V2 Release)

• 28 onboarded on Sendd.store (released 20th Jan) (8 In person.)

• 9 new marketplaces signed up to Sendd.market waitlist in January

• $0 in saved fees for customers (reset stats for V2. V1 Ended on $95,000+ by 31st Dec 2025)

• ~25,000+ total views across social channels in January (+107% MoM), achieved with $0 paid spend

Product Updates (Since 1st Jan)

Sendd (Company)

• Sendd, Inc. (US subsidiary setup) (Wholly owned by Sendd Limited in NZ)

• Banking setup in the US.

• Accounting & Accountant setup in the US.

• Stripe setup in the US.

We had to setup Sendd in the US to get access to specific functionality we need to be able to operate a multi vendor, multi marketplace, multi payouts product. This functionality is on limited beta for Stripe in the US. While we setup everything needed with Stripe in the US. We are still running into some issues with being enabled for Global Payouts with Stripe. I’m personally navigating the support escalation process with Stripe to solve this and getting help with my relationships inside Stripe to help figure it out. As a backup we are going to explore Wise & Airwallex + building our own payouts engine for this if needed. I’ll also likely need some legal support in drafting our T&C and Sendd Policies to be water tight to make sure we never get bucketed into a basket where exclusive content creators could use us for explicit content. Sendd is for small business + marketplaces and our Terms of Service makes it clear we do not support any banned substance, excise or controlled products and ban explicit content of any kind.

Sendd.store

• Sendd Store Released. (https://sendd.store/) (Live Store Accounts)

• Staging available at (https://www.sendd.shop/) (Test Store Accounts)

• Things that are an different from MVP Product: New Store onboarding, New Sendd.store Layout, Improved Social Media Handling, New Physical product with shipping, New Digital Product with file delivery, New Events with proper ticketing, New Subscriptions with subscription handling, New Inquiry Form, New Link-in-bio style links, Updated Digital POS (Point of Sale) New Customer Order Management, New Business Order Management, Settings, Stripe Onboarding & New Express Dashboard, Upgraded Receipts, New Business email notifications & Referrals, all released.

• Our product velocity is sky-rocketing. We will have a best in class product, across E-commerce & Marketplaces in less than a year. It will be impossible to ignore Sendd & our value proposition in the market when compared to Shopify, Etsy and even Amazon. This in part is due to Claude Code & AI tools increasing our ability as a team to ship and iterate on product 100x faster. We have shipped more in January than Q3 of 2025. We shipped more in Q3 than we did in the previous year.

• Software companies over the next decade will look very different from the last.

  Historically, mature software companies have been ~5% ideation, 20% product, and 75% engineering. The next generation will invert that; moving closer to 10% ideation, 70% product execution, and 20% engineering leverage through automation, AI, and infrastructure abstraction. This shift will reset the market across every layer. Distribution and underlying rails will become the primary sources of defensibility. At the same time, consumer expectations for product quality, speed, and experience will increase by an order of magnitude.

  We are structurally built for this shift. Our architecture and business model position us to consolidate workflows, compress margins, and absorb volume across entire categories of software and marketplace businesses.

  The next phase of the market will reward platforms that control distribution, simplify complexity, and ship product velocity at scale. Exciting year ahead.

Sendd.market

• V3 Demo in progress (Not released as yet.)

• We didn’t do much product work on Sendd.market this month. Both our full time developers were focused on Sendd.store release alongside me on product and our design team.

• We did however add another 9 marketplaces on our waitlist +1000 sellers across those marketplaces. One marketplace is even offering us to pay $5000 to give them priority. Pretty awesome. We will prioritize them as they represent 10s of 1000s of sellers for us in Australia but we haven’t accepted the $ yet. Expect a demo soon.

Summary

January marked a major milestone for Sendd: the release of Sendd.store.

Getting Sendd.store live has been a year‑long labour of love. It’s something we wanted to ship last year, but the reality of building a bootstrapped company meant navigating constant change across the engineering and product teams. Interns joined, left, returned; roles evolved; priorities shifted. We didn’t have the luxury of over‑hiring or running a textbook recruitment process; we had to learn, adapt, and keep building in parallel.

Despite that, we shipped.

Sendd.store going live matters because the previous version of the product, while used by over 200 businesses, was fundamentally incomplete. Subscriptions existed but couldn’t be upgraded, downgraded, or cancelled. Digital products could be listed but files couldn’t be added or delivered. Physical products didn’t collect shipping information. In practice, the only feature that truly worked end‑to‑end was Digital POS, which; especially when paired with QR codes; proved powerful for in‑person selling.

Sendd.store V2 fixes those gaps end‑to‑end. Sellers can now list physical products with variations, price and inventory logic, collect shipping at checkout with flat‑rate support, deliver digital products properly, and manage subscriptions that customers can actually upgrade, downgrade, or cancel. The result is a product that reflects how sellers really operate day‑to‑day, not how we imagined they might.

That over 200 businesses used V1 despite its limitations was validating. Shipping V2; a materially better, more complete product; gives us confidence that Sendd.store can now scale usage rather than simply survive it.

This release also marks a shift in how we’re operating overall. We’re no longer testing whether Sendd works; we’re refining how it works best. That same mindset is now carrying through to Sendd.market, where fewer assumptions and tighter feedback loops are driving faster convergence on the right product.

Ticketing & Wallet Support

Alongside core commerce improvements, Sendd.store now supports ticketed products; events, sessions, and access-based offerings. This extends Sendd beyond goods into real-world experiences.

Apple Pay and Google Pay wallet support is about to ship, allowing customers to add tickets directly to their wallets after purchase. Combined with QR codes, this enables fast in‑person ticket sales and check‑in flows, further strengthening Sendd.store as a modern point‑of‑sale layer.

Sendd.market Progress

While build time on Sendd.market has been intentionally constrained, progress has continued through demos and partner conversations. Each iteration has sharpened our understanding of what a marketplace actually needs at V1 versus what can wait.

As a result, demos are becoming more opinionated, more realistic, and closer to the final product. Sendd.market is on track to go live soon with pilot partners.

Team & Operating Reality

Operating as a bootstrap company has meant making hard trade‑offs. In a few cases, we’ve had to help strong contributors move on purely due to capital constraints; including acting as references for team members we would otherwise have loved to keep longer.

These situations are difficult, but handled with integrity. Relationships are preserved, people are supported, and the team remains aligned on the long‑term mission.

Fundraising & Bootstrapping Decision

Several investor conversations from late 2025 are continuing into 2026. At the same time, we’ve reached clarity internally that we will likely continue bootstrapping through to the Sendd.market launch.

This is a deliberate choice. Getting Sendd.market live materially de‑risks the business. If strong strategic alignment and terms emerge post‑launch, we’ll raise from a position of strength. Until then, disciplined bootstrapping remains the default. We will also most likely do a raise in the US on US terms as our primary market. Flights are booked for 15th April to head over!

Growth & Content

The social and content team has begun ramping up with a stronger focus on data, feedback loops, and measurable outcomes. Output quality and consistency are improving as we build a more repeatable growth engine.

What We’ve Been Focused On

Product

• Tightening Sendd.store V2 based on early access feedback

• Deep work on marketplace primitives: permissions, discovery, and reuse of sellers/products across marketplaces

• Reducing friction in setup and “first success” moments

Customers & Marketplaces

• Ongoing deep interviews across sellers, curators, and operators

• Several marketplaces actively referring sellers to Sendd before their own marketplace launches

• Clear signals that marketplaces want speed, governance, and reuse; not custom builds

Team

• Engineering velocity improving as scope narrows and feedback sharpens

• Continued collaboration across Bangkok / NZ / distributed team

• Preparing for more in-person execution post-funding

Marketplace Momentum

• 35+ marketplaces on Sendd.market waitlist

• Representing 12,000+ potential storefronts

• Multiple marketplaces now actively preparing pilots rather than “exploring”

Focus remains disciplined:

• Quality of partners > quantity

• Pilots that produce learnings > launches for vanity

• Infrastructure first, growth second

Financials

• December burn: ~$6,500 NZD

• January burn: ~$8,500 NZD

• Runway: Sustainable at current burn.

  • Sustainable indefinitely at sub-$9k burn

  • Current burn being supported via reserves + founder top-up.

  • As part of our planning for 2026, we have doubled down on Sendd as a team. Injecting double the cash into the business every month compared to before. This allows us to keep bootstrapping with the increased burn and the full time developer team with Dev & Tum + Cyrus full time on content and Shawn & Edmund part time.

Feb Execution Goals:

Sendd.store

• Target: first 100 customers onboarded by end of February

• Release Equipment Rentals (Customers Waiting for Access.)

• Release Sendd MCP V1 (This is going to be crazy powerful.) In the testing we are doing customers can do everything from their own chatGPT account and Sendd deploys it instantly. Game changer for sellers with quick product creation needs like second hand clothing sellers.

• Release Sendd Help Center

• Release Sendd Use Cases

• Release Sendd Blog’s

• Release Reviews in Sendd.

• Release API’s V1

• Release new payment method.

• Release a better Referral Flow.

Sendd.market

• V1 will not be live by end of February. Target now end of March.

• Demo V3 releasing in February

• 20 New Marketplace Sign Ups

Growth & Content

• Jan/Feb goal of 20k views exceeded in the first half of the Jan. (~19k views on Sendd channels + ~6.4k personal views, with additional reach from the wider social team).

• February target: 40k total views, continuing with $0 paid spend and doubling down on what’s working

Community, Content & Events

Follow us on Socials: Links on landing page! https://www.sendd.store/

We’re putting a big focus on distribution and storytelling this year:

• Follow Sendd on Instagram to see product updates, founder journey content, and experiments in public.

• Connect with us on LinkedIn for product milestones, company updates, and ecosystem partnerships.

• We’ll also be dropping founder and build-in-public vlog content very soon — showing how Sendd is actually being built week-to-week.

If you are in Wellington, you can also grab a ticket and come check out The Night Market we’re hosting at The Atom; wrapping up our 6-week sprint called The Fission Project, alongside a group of incredible founders building in the ecosystem:

👉 https://sendd.store/theatom

🎯 Primary Ask

Warm introductions to US-based community or vertical-led organizations that could move quickly into a pilot for a Sendd Market.

Ideal partners:

• Already aggregate sellers or creators in a community or group

• Care about curation and trust

• Want speed without custom infrastructure

Warm intros are deeply appreciated. Dm me for a custom email you can Sendd them!

Thank you for the continued trust and support.
— Adi

Link to Sendd.market & demo:

https://www.sendd.market/
(Try our V2 demo. Click “Try a Demo” then Demo V2. You can also join the marketplace waitlist on this page. The YES marketplace Demo is the richest demo. Multiple iterations happening on demo’s for different customers so functionality varies demo by demo.)

Explainer video of the interns learning about the Sendd market: here.

Traction since last update:

• 210+ Sign Ups (since V1 launch)

• $86,000+ in fees saved for customers (since V1 launch)

• A steady trickle of regular transaction volume on V1 product.

• Ships since last update:

  • Sendd.store: 27+ (All on staging.) (Try staging on https://www.sendd.shop/)

  • Sendd.market: 10+ (V2 demo live, V3 coming soon.)

Summary

This is officially my final Sendd update for 2025.

There’s a familiar rhythm to this moment. In late December 2024, Sendd V1 entered final testing. Almost exactly a year later, Sendd.store V2 entered final testing this week. At the same time, Sendd.market is moving fast: a V2 demo is live, and V3 is already in progress.

What’s been most exciting is the quality of feedback we’re getting. The loops are short, sharp, and deeply constructive; coming directly from marketplace operators who are waiting to launch on Sendd. That velocity has given me a quiet confidence in what we’re building. Not just that it’s differentiated, but that when Sendd.market launches early next year, it will be one of the strongest V1 marketplace products ever seen.

In the last update, I shared how proud I was of the progress we made this year, and referenced Jeff Bezos’ reflection on the energy required to be distinctive; and why it’s worth paying that price. As the year wraps up, I want to build on that idea. Anxiety comes from not having done enough preparation. Kobe Bryant spoke about this often, and it resonates deeply with me. The harder I work; and the harder we work as a team; the calmer things feel. I find myself needing to sell less, pitch less, and persuade less. With customers, investors, and partners alike, the work increasingly speaks for itself.

We’re watching a path we deliberately chose begin to materialise into something real and valuable. That confidence has changed how we communicate, how efficiently deals close, and how consistently the team operates in a flow state. I’m not sure whether it’s the market responding to that energy, or whether we’ve simply become much better at communicating clearly; but either way, it’s working.

Sendd is on a trajectory I’m genuinely excited about; not in a way that feels speculative or uncertain, but in a way where I deeply understand the destination. That makes it possible to enjoy the journey more and show up fully each day.

To close out 2025, I’ll leave you with the words that have defined this year for me:

Quiet confidence.
Trust the work and the outcomes you know to be true.
Don’t outsource decisions to trends.
Value coherence over spectacle.
Be comfortable making irreversible choices; most doors aren’t actually one-way.
Think in years and decades, not months and quarters.

What We’ve Been Up To (Since August)

This update is overdue; I’ve rewritten it a few times as one exciting development kept overtaking the next.

The short version of the last few months:

• I spent significant time in the America’s, meeting with potential stores and potential marketplace operators; our primary target market. Days were spent in back-to-back conversations; evenings were spent iterating rapidly with the team.

• After returning to New Zealand, we pushed hard on hiring for the engineering team and went deeper on marketplace design and demos. We now have a V1 demo, V2 demo, and V3 in progress. Tum joined us as a full time, full stack engineer & he’s smashing it.

• I then travelled to India, where I met with manufacturers across categories including bedding, soaps, and bottling brands. These conversations gave us deep insight into regional logistics, payments, and marketplace infrastructure. We also identified MP as a state with lots of potential for vertical integration & expansion. Lots of government subsidies, a dry port, the heart of the country with tons of manufacturing capabilities and importantly for Asia, access to political and business leverage with deep family networks.

One insight from India stood out clearly: if manufacturers or brands onboard directly to Sendd; and enable their marketplace settings publicly; any marketplace could instantly discover, add, and resell those products globally. Instant distribution for sellers & a library of products for marketplaces to seed themselves with.

We also listed some products on Amazon India & filled in some RFQ’s for Amazon Basics for the US. Fascinating to see how manual that process still is for them and for listing on Amazon in India how painful it all is. We met with many agencies that purely service listing on Amazon in India as a service due to complexities involved.

This highlights the real problem we’re solving.

Sendd isn’t just a two-sided marketplace. It’s a 3 body problem with 3 key stakeholders & infrastructure being critical underlying ingredient, not as a stakeholder but as a key catalyst needed:

• End customers (Buyers)

• Sellers / brands / manufacturers

• Marketplaces / curators

• Payments, logistics, and platform infrastructure being a core capability we need.

Solving for each of these is hard on its own. Solving them together is even harder; but the reward scales with the difficulty and solving this creates a deep long term moat for Sendd.

Marketplace Momentum

• 26+ marketplaces are now signed up to the Sendd.market waitlist

• These represent 11,000+ potential storefronts

• Several marketplaces are already referring businesses to us to start using Sendd storefronts & now marketplaces to us today

Our focus over the last few months has been deliberate and disciplined:

Targets

• Meet and record conversations with as many potential marketplaces as possible → Achieved and ongoing

• Grow the marketplace waitlist → Achieved and ongoing

• Capture visceral, visual stories of real pain points → Achieved and ongoing

• Be ready to pilot Sendd.store + Sendd.market V1 → Demos ongoing, pilots planned for early 2026

Fundraising Context

Following the August update, we received a number of inbound conversations around fundraising. We’ve had some excellent discussions, with more scheduled early in the new year.

Our position remains simple:

If we find strong terms and genuine strategic alignment, we’ll complete a funding round. If not, we’ll continue bootstrapping. At our current rate of execution, the underlying value of the company is compounding month-to-month regardless.

For investors who would like to connect, the next few weeks are a good window. I’ll be working through December 24, and back online from January 5. Link to view pitch deck below:

The Pitch Deck: Dec 2025 Version

Financials

• Sept Burn: $3,000 NZD

• October Burn: $3,000 NZD

• Nov Burn: $3,500 NZD

• Dec Burn: $6,500 NZD

Runway: Unlimited at sub $4,000 NZD burn. Cash reserves are low. However we can sustain the $6,500 current burn using our reserves and additional top up from me for a while if needed.

The Good

• Sendd store V2 product. (Try staging on Sendd.shop) is 10x better than V1. The customers we have showed it to so far; are super excited for it.

• Tum & Dev as the core engineering team and both full time are doing a great job! With Vlad, Tum, Rajib in Bangkok. We are likely going to move Dev to Bangkok from India post a funding round and get an in person office for the team.

• Ben & Kenia on the design side have been smashing it. The pitch deck in recent weeks has been a labour of love for them and it looks beautiful and tells our story clearly!

• Cyrus has officially graduated and we have increased his days and times, he’s been pushing hard on content, adding to his equipment stockpile and pulling in Edmund and others to support as well!

• Zac joined the team as an Intern up in Auckland, around the same time as Tum and he’s been doing a great job also. Working closely with me on marketplace validation, problem discovery on marketplaces through to problem -> solution -> product fit on the marketplace side.

• I presented to a few investment committees and to our community here at The Atom and the feedback has been invaluable in making the story and the pitch better. A special shoutout to James (Blackbird) also for taking time out of his day multiple times in giving incredible feedback on our story and deck. His insights have helped us evolve the deck and the investor memo in a big way also.

• We are in a really strong position for 2026. I’m excited to build on our 25 momentum and deliver a impactful solution to thousands of businesses. Also to earn the revenue that comes with that!

The Bad

• A key team member has been dealing with significant health problems in their immediate family, coupled with their day job being extra burdensome in the last few months, has severely limited their ability over the last few months. While we are doing our best to support them and not much we can do to help on the health side. It has been difficult as being a small team; it has a direct impact on our output. Us being able to get them on full time post a funding round solves ½ of the problems they face and would significantly speed us up.

Jan/Feb Goals:

• Sendd.store: First 100 customers given access.

• Sendd.market: V1 Live (1x Pilot access given).

• Deep Customer Interviews: 50+ interviews conducted on Sendd.store + Sendd.market.

• Social Media: 20,000+ views across channels.

🎯 Primary Ask

Marketplace Intros (US Launch Focus)

As we prepare to scale Sendd’s marketplace ecosystem in the United States, our top priority right now is warm introductions to partners who could benefit from launching curated marketplaces on Sendd.

We’re specifically looking for connections to organizations, communities, and businesses that fit one or more of the following profiles and could move quickly to pilot or launch:

1. Community-Driven Organizations

Examples: Young Enterprise (YES), nonprofits, professional associations, alumni networks, youth entrepreneurship groups
Why: These groups have highly engaged members and existing trust. They’re ideal for launching curated marketplaces because they already aggregate buyers and sellers; meaning quicker onboarding and network effects for Sendd. For example, Young Enterprise (https://youngenterprise.org.nz/) runs entrepreneurship programs across schools and communities; a marketplace here could unlock a commerce layer supporting student-created products, events, and services.

2. Vertical Creator & Passion-Driven Communities

Examples: Craft/maker collectives (e.g., regional makerspaces), board game clubs and cons circuits, niche sports communities (disc golf leagues), gaming clans/leagues
Why: These communities have active creators and dedicated buyers. They’re looking for better monetization channels and curated, brand-aligned marketplaces; Sendd unlocks a commerce layer that fits their culture.

3. Mission-Aligned Nonprofits & Social Impact Networks

Examples: Environmental orgs that work with artisans, social enterprises, youth outreach programs
Why: Many nonprofits support small-scale makers or local tradespeople but lack a dedicated marketplace infrastructure. Sendd can power purpose-driven commerce that amplifies impact while creating predictable revenue share.

4. Business/Professional Networks

Examples: Regional chambers of commerce, industry guilds, startup incubators & accelerators

Why: These organizations aggregate professionals and SMBs who could benefit from vertical-specific commerce ecosystems e.g., an accelerator-branded marketplace for portfolio founders.

As always, thank you for your continued support, trust, and belief in what we’re building.

From The Sendd Team,

Adi, Rajib, Dev, Tum, Cyrus, Edmund, Kenia, Zac, Ben, Vlad, Jackie.

(This email update is now sent via Substack. If you wish to be removed from my update list, shoot me an email back and I’ll remove you from the list!)

<———>

Email intro template:

Subject: Intro: Adiraj Gupta (Sendd); Launching curated marketplaces

Hi {{Name}},

I wanted to introduce you to Adiraj Gupta (cc’d); Founder of Sendd:
👉

https://www.sendd.market/

Sendd helps organizations and communities launch curated, multi-seller marketplaces in minutes. A good example is this demo marketplace built for Young Enterprise (YES):
👉 https://demo.sendd.market/marketplace/yes-marketplace

Adi is now exploring a small number of US-based pilot marketplaces with community-led organizations and thought you / your network could be a strong fit.

I’ll let you both take it from here.

Best,
{{Investor Name}}

Link to Sendd.market landing page:

https://www.sendd.market/
(Work in progress. You can join the waitlist if you’d like a marketplace of your own.)

Link to Sendd.market demo (click “Try Demo”): https://www.sendd.market/
(Also work in progress. The demo walks through quick store creation, marketplace creation, and then simulates being a Sendd.store seller with a product/service/event. You can join demo marketplaces, experience both sides of the marketplace, add items to a cart, and complete a dummy checkout.)

Traction since last update

• 197+ Sign Ups (since V1 launch)

• $63,000 in fees saved for customers (since V1 launch)

• A steady trickle of regular transaction volume

• Ships since last update:

  • Sendd.me: 0 (likely no more updates to legacy)

  • Sendd.store: 13+ (all on staging, not live yet)

  • Sendd.market: 8+ (V1 demo live + waitlist sign-up)

Summary:

It’s been one year since we first started building Sendd. V1 development began around August 20th, with Indy and Jordan leading the way at the time; so a mini happy birthday to Sendd.me V1!

So much has happened since then, and I’m more excited than ever for what the next year will bring. I’m also extremely proud of everything we have achieved and the energy we have put into things. As I reflect on the year gone by, the last letter Jeff Bezos wrote as CEO of Amazon comes to mind. “You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it’s worth it… Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free. You’ll have to put energy into it continuously.” His words remain more true than ever; as the rate of change and the energy differential needed to survive and thrive becomes exponential. I’m grateful at 29 today to have infinite energy; to create a business that will allow me to grow and exert energy completely; to keep building our distinctness and our mental models for decades to come.

At this juncture we say farewell to Aty, Zoe, Esme, Jacob, and Keez, who have all taken on new full-time roles. We wish them every success! Ivan, Ben, and Vlad have also moved to full-time roles elsewhere, but like Rajib, they’ll continue part-time supporting our mission. Finding great people is tough; keeping them without adequate resources to support them financially is even harder. I’m deeply grateful for all their contributions and hopeful that we’ve made a positive impact on their journeys. We keep everyone in our Alumni chat and share updates so they remain part of the Sendd story.

On the bright side, Dev (Engineering, full-time), Cyrus (Social Media Intern), and Edmund (Social Media Intern) have joined the team. Dev started part-time a month ago and quickly earned a full-time role through great performance. Cyrus and Edmund are students we met through our networks, already creating excellent content on their own. They’re doing a fantastic job (check out Sendd.store on socials). This time, we’re backing them with a small monthly budget so they can be more creative and experimental. As resources grow, so will their budgets; with the goal that one day they’ll manage big campaigns with a proven playbook for us.

Looking ahead:

• Sendd.store needs to go live ASAP.

• Sendd.market waitlist and demo are live, with Rajib and Dev working flat-out. We’re on daily calls (3/4 hours each) plus independent work around time zone overlap.

This is critical: of the 17+ marketplaces signed up to the waitlist, they represent roughly 10,000 storefronts for Sendd. Some marketplaces are already referring businesses to us so they can start using our storefronts today.

While amazing, it’s also a challenge; our current Sendd.me product doesn’t handle digital products, physical shipping, or subscriptions well. That’s why merchants like Geordie from Keyzee (https://www.sendd.me/keyzee) are manually emailing customers for shipping details; a terrible experience. Sendd.store fixes these gaps and enables access to marketplaces, so every new Sendd.me sign-up is another customer we’ll want to migrate.

Target for the next two months:

• Meet and record conversations with as many potential marketplaces as possible.

• Grow the waitlist.

• Capture visceral, visual stories of their pain points.

• Be ready to pilot Sendd.store + Sendd.market V1 with them.

On the fundraising side, I’ll also be meeting investors who could lead our first big round. Once we launch marketplaces, we expect competition. Incumbents will direct significant resources toward this land grab. My preference is to bootstrap quietly until no one sees us coming, then raise a large round with the war chest needed to win this new category we are creating.

The Pitch (current version)

“Sendd is the first no-subscription, payment-agnostic commerce network: a new category in e-commerce.

Merchants launch stores in seconds, pay only 1% per sale, and plug directly into marketplaces curated by influencers and communities. Each marketplace drives more merchants, and each merchant drives more marketplaces: a viral flywheel compounding growth every cycle.

What makes this possible is AI: our agents handle migration (already tested), shipping, and inventory; so that one person with Sendd can do the work of hundreds at a traditional marketplace. This unlocks a brand-new revenue stream for creators and communities; something no incumbent was built to support.

And here’s why they can’t just copy us:

• Shopify would have to cannibalize its subscription revenue model.

• Amazon/Etsy are stuck in closed marketplace structures; they can’t flip to open, community-owned networks.

• WooCommerce depends on a fragmented ecosystem of plugins and developers, not a seamless viral growth loop.

Sendd is structurally different. But this is a land grab market: once we launch Sendd.market, we need to be well-capitalized to move fast, lock in marketplace partners, and cement Sendd as the default platform before incumbents can react.”

Financials

• June Burn: $9,500 NZD

• July Burn: $4,000 NZD

• August Burn (projected): $2,000 NZD

Finances took a hit in June/July. We supported team members through medical emergencies and hired (then let go) three full-time developers within six weeks due to poor performance. Despite a thorough process (80+ applicants, multiple rounds), real-world output was shockingly bad. We paid them fully and lost time from our core team, slowing Sendd.store progress to a crawl.

Thankfully, removing them stabilized our burn rate. Had they performed, Sendd.store and Sendd.market would already be live with cash reserves remaining. Unfortunately, neither happened.

We’re also awaiting the outcome of a $100,000 grant application. (We were rejected; brutal, given the clear impact. One day this will be a great story. Today isn’t that day.)

Runway: Unlimited at sub-$4,000 NZD burn. Cash reserves are low. Hiring experiments paused until after Sendd.store + Sendd.market V1 launch.

The Good

• Marketplace excitement and waitlist adoption is very strong

• Regular transaction volume continues (small, but steady)

• Core team is strong, new social media team is excelling

• Finances stabilized (though fragile)

• Referral engine ramping up; the flywheel is already spinning

• V2 product will be a major leap forward

• AI migration breakthrough: an agent migrated a Shopify store to Sendd autonomously (no Shopify login required). Migration cost → zero. Switching pain → gone. Stickiness will come from unique value (Sendd.market), not lock-in tactics like Shopify’s “unsubscribe and lose your store.”

The Bad

• Losing great teammates due to lack of resources

• Hiring misfires cost us runway and momentum

• Product delays from wasted time and energy

Goals

June/July Goals (recap):

• Build US conviction data points: Progress slow, but strong despite setbacks

• Release V2 Sendd.store: Delayed

• Hire full-time dev: Failed (3x let go), though success with Dev

• Marketplace V1 Prototype: Demo live!

• Release Sendd Pay: Delayed

• Release Shipping V1: Delayed

• Find social media support: Cyrus & Edmund joined, already smashing it!

August/September Goals:

• Build US conviction data points (marketplaces): Target 200 waitlist signups (currently 17)

• Build US investment pipeline: Target 10+ top-tier lead funds + 100+ strategic co-investors

• Release V2 Sendd.store

🎯 Primary Ask

Marketplace Intros (US Launch Focus):
We’re seeking connections to influencers, communities, or businesses that want to spin up curated marketplaces on Sendd.

Ideal partners:

• Creators with 100K+ engaged followers.

• Community leaders with niche vertical audiences (fitness, beauty, local food, crafts).

• Organizations already aggregating SMBs (co-ops, associations).

👉 “If you know anyone in the US who could launch a marketplace, please connect us.”

🔑 Secondary Ask

Strategic Investor Intros:
We’re looking for investors with deep ties to marketplaces, e-commerce, or payments.

Especially:

• Marketplaces (Etsy, Faire, Amazon ex-execs).

• Payments (Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com networks).

• Logistics (Flexport, Shippo).

👉 “If you know strategic angels or VCs who understand marketplaces + fintech, we’d love a warm intro.”

Template email for you to use for intro’s attached below.

From The Sendd Team,

Adi, Rajib, Dev, Cyrus, Edmund, Ivan, Ben, Vlad, Soonsung.

(This email is personally sent from me to you. If you wish to be removed from my update list, shoot me an email back and I’ll remove you from the list!)

Subject: Intro to Adi (Founder of Sendd)

Hi [Contact],

Wanted to introduce you to Adiraj Gupta (Adi), founder of Sendd — a no-subscription e-commerce + marketplace platform growing fast in NZ and expanding into the US.

Why relevant:

• Sendd makes it dead simple for anyone to spin up a storefront in minutes.

• [Influencers & communities can create curated marketplaces, set their own commission %, and earn directly from sales.]

• [Payment-agnostic: unlike Shopify, merchants aren’t locked into Stripe, Sendd supports local + global rails.]

• [Investors: Sendd is positioned as Shopify + Etsy + Stripe rebuilt for virality, with 200 merchants live today and 500+ merchants + 10 marketplaces coming in the next 6 months.]

• Products live:

  • Sendd.me → current V1 product (stores live now).

  • Sendd.store → full-featured store builder (coming soon).

  • Sendd.market → marketplace platform (waitlist + demo live now).

I thought you’d be a great person for Adi to connect with given your experience in [marketplaces / creator monetization / fintech / logistics / investing].

Adi → meet [Contact].

I’ll let you two take it from here.

Best,
[Investor]

Traction since last update:

• 170+ Sign Ups.

• $49,000 in fees saved for customers.

• First internet $ made.

• First team in-person.

• Ships since launch: 24 Releases (43 bug fixes, upgrades and improvements)

• Building Sendd V2 (Sendd.store) (V1 Sendd.me has had its last update most likely)

Summary:

We are growing, we are gaining momentum and our value prop is getting more clear. Sendd started with a simple idea. The idea being anyone should be able to create an online storefront in seconds. Start selling products and services without high monthly subscription fees, crazy platform fees or the need to hire developers and/or buy guides/themes to get started. This idea came about because Etsy sellers who were looking for an alternative solution, started using our invoice tool as a way to sell products and manually do the work to fulfill those items. This led to creating the v1.0 of the Sendd product and signing up customers. Example Store: https://www.sendd.me/prelovedtoreloved

Since the last update we have learned our value proposition compared to incumbents is not big enough. While we are faster, cheaper and have a better user experience our product is marginally better than competitors, for a fair few key use cases, the current version may actually be worse. This results in sales requiring a conversation and trust building to be done prior to a sign up. (It also doesn’t help that we currently do not have much content on the internet about us, or guides and reviews that help us build trust naturally.) However, even with our limitations, 80%+ of our customers are coming via a referral currently. This is a strong signal, as those that try it, get it and then they refer people to us.

​​While having a high referral rate may be good enough for most businesses, it is not good enough for us. We want to be magnitudes better in every way. We want to create a new category/industry. Currently when people think of E-commerce they think of Shopify. We have always wanted this to be the case, not to be the next Shopify but the first Sendd. This search for being the best has taken us into some interesting conversations and pathways with customers. Over the last few months the thinking has significantly evolved and data points have been consolidated to us having a strong belief that we can create an entirely new category and be the best in that space.

Introducing Sendd Marketplaces, a way for anyone to create a Marketplace. Marketplaces are notoriously expensive. Quotes we have received and many of our customers have received range in the $150-200,000 mark for the software development as a starting point to create a basic marketplace. While E-commerce stores can be expensive (as high as $10,000+) the cost of a marketplace doesn’t start below $100,000. This cost is coupled with massive complexity and a terrible user experience. In the last few months we have learnt how complex E-commerce truly is when you factor in all the various elements that go into it. (While I strongly believe AI will eventually make this easier. For now Shopify has done the best job of democratizing it and almost making it a commodity. Though the real cost with all the add-ons and developers required to have a good store is still crazy high.)

Marketplaces are an entirely different beast. It’s an entirely different abstraction away from traditional E-commerce. Every true marketplace that currently exists has a unique way of handling customers, sellers, categorization and management. On the other hand every E-commerce store including Shopify stores have a different way of handling categories, classifications and how they handle customers, messaging etc. This results in platforms like Shopify creating their own marketplace (called Shop) but not being able to enable anyone else to have their own marketplaces. Meanwhile, Etsy, Trade me and others even if they wanted to give others the ability to have their own marketplace, wouldn’t be able to. Due to them self cannibalizing their own business if they do so, and their technology is designed to be handled and maintained by a large internal team. Not a small external 1 or 2 people marketplace coordinator/team.

Given the validation we have already done in New Zealand & the daily conversations we are having in the US. We have strong conviction on both being able to create a category in this space and drive large amounts of transaction volumes through Sendd marketplaces at scale. Imagine every influencer, community, business leader having their own marketplace. A perfect proof point for this is Revolve, (https://www.revolve.com/content/my-ambassadors). Revolve is allowing influencers to have their own stores on the Revolve website. Now imagine these influencers having their own marketplaces, where they can showcase all products across brands/stores they love not just individually by a company like revolve is doing.

We are having deeper conversations with serious lead investors from NZ/US currently and while we want to be live with Sendd Marketplaces V1 before we consider doing a round. If you are interested in building a long term relationship with us, now is the time to start having early conversations.

Financials:

Monthly Burn (Feb - May (Averaged)): $4500 NZD

June Estimated: $4000 NZD

We are also waiting to hear back on a potential $100,000 Grant Application.

(This would enable us to have 2 additional full time developers to speed up our delivery and sustain a higher burn for a 12 month period.)

Runway Unlimited below $4000 NZD Burn.

The Good:

• Product got some beautiful updates!! https://www.sendd.me/adi & https://www.sendd.me/

• (Sign up or sign in to take a look around!)

• Team is showing strong signs of a great early culture!! (Special shoutout to Rajib (Engineering), Ivan (Product), Ben (Design), Vlad (QA & Hiring).

• Also interviewed a few amazing developers so hopefully we expand the team soon with full time hires.

• Customer interviews and sessions have been rewarding, insightful and helpful in guiding us towards the marketplace pathway.

• First in person was incredible! Spent a week with the team in Bangkok!

The Bad:

• V1 Sendd.me won’t scale. Built on the wrong stack, was predominantly built for the invoice software which morphed into V1 Sendd. We are rebuilding now on a scalable stack now.

• Finding & retaining incredible marketing team members has been insanely hard. (Especially with no resources or incentives for this role other than early stage equity). We have an awesome group of Social Media Interns who I have a high belief and trust in, but currently life is getting in the way for them and we need guidance for them. My skills here are lacking for what they need.

June/July Goals:

• Build Strong US Conviction Data Points (Marketplaces):

• Release V2 Sendd Store:

• Hire Full Time Dev:

• Marketplace V1 Prototype:

• Release Sendd Pay:

• Release Shipping V1:

• Find a Social Media expert to support team:

Asks:

• Primary: Connections to marketplaces, or people interested in creating one in the US.

• Secondary: Connections to any investors we should be keeping in the loop on progress.

From The Sendd Team,

Adi, Rajib, Ivan, Ben, Vlad, Soonsung, Aty, Zoe, Esme, Jacob, Keez

(This email is personally sent from me to you. If you wish to be removed from my update list, shoot me an email back and I’ll remove you from the list!)

Traction Since V1 Release: Product went live 31st Dec 2024

• 135+ Sign Ups (50 In person, non-organic)

• 30 Connected Accounts (8 Stripe Enabled Accounts (Ready to Sell))

• Transaction volume since launch: $5

• Revenue since launch: $0.05

• Ships since launch: 5 Releases (28 bug fixes, upgrades and improvements)

Summary (Dec/Jan):

We managed to get the product live just before midnight on New Year Eve! This was a big step in the company’s journey and also a nice feeling to have a live product before the start of 2025. Everyone took a week off enjoying the exciting Wellington summer (IYKYK).

In the last month and a half we have added some awesome new members to the team. Rajib who has joined us as a senior developer has been vital in helping us get V1 over the line. The month of January has largely been about testing our product, onboarding customers, watching the issues and bugs they hit, improving the product and repeating. We have been able to significantly improve the product in the last month with this approach.

I’ve also adopted a new model for working personally, every week I’m listing out the biggest problems the company needs to solve. I’m just working on problem number 1 on that list every week till it’s solved. This has been really helpful in problem/solution maximization as I only move to the next item on the list till the previous highest priority is solved. (When possible.)

Some problems solved with this process in the last month:

1. Need for a Senior Developer that can help us accelerate and release products much faster.

• As a team we found & onboarded Rajib (Less than 4 days.) Rajib has been critical in our speed of delivery and helping truly move business forward on development.

2. Systems/processes in managing tasks/bugs/issues/improvements and releases.

• We set up GitHub projects and are now using it for task tracking, as well as our releases, bug reports, issues and as the operating system for how we ship quickly.

3. Need for growth/content/social media leader that can help lead content creation and organic relational marketing for Sendd.

• Penny joins the team to help us with this, she starts in this role on Monday!

4. Need for speeding up our customer feedback, customer interview, design system & how quickly we can iterate, improve and ship products.

• Ben joined the team as a UX/UI and customer service/customer experience Designer.

• We also have Frank joining the team on UX/UI, Brand and creative shortly.

5. Need for increasing trust and distribution in the local marketplace.

• Partnered with Victoria University to support the 4 week summer accelerator program. 30+ students signed up, Sendd as mandatory product being used for the course. Some awesome media and pictures etc to be released in the future.

• Re-opened The Atom space at Victoria University for any small business owners, founders, creators to come and Co-Work from the space for free. Sendd is supporting by providing the Wifi, Youtube Premium, me working from the space and helping open it everyday so people can come work!

• Partnering with Startup Weekend Wellington to both sell tickets to the weekend using Sendd but also to allow participants to use it during the weekend to solve some of the biggest pain points of starting a business and being able to Sell.

• Working on partnering with a small business community locally in Wellington (Small Business School helping real businesses sell better 1900+ graduates and members.)

• Sponsored an award for students + hopefully some media releases out soon also.

6. Need for regular content to be created and released that self serves the market.

• Setting up a Ring doorbell at The Atom co-working space. Any founder, small business can come and press the button. Pitch their business for 120 seconds. We download the footage remotely and publish it on Sendd channels as well as tagging the business and giving them free marketing. (Growth Hack No 1). With our Wifi setup, and the doorbell we are using, we can also relocate both things and take them on the road with us also! Allowing content to be created out and about!

The Good:

• Product is live!!!

• Team is growing! We welcomed Rajib, Ben, Penny, Vlad, Frank, Penny & Drake this month.

• Also interviewed a few amazing developers we are in the process with and hopefully having one of them join also!

• We’ve learnt a ton by having our product live in the market and doing in person onboarding meetings + some zoom onboarding meetings. The YC ship fast and iterate model actually works.

• Product is fundamentally valuable and we are being pulled by customers into exploring some interesting things! (More on this soon.)

• Customers love how slick the product is and the user experience.

• We are most likely under charging for the product, my hope is we can scale super fast due to this which helps us win faster. Also Stripe is expensive, ideally we want to replace Stripe in the future.

The Bad:

• Some customers are getting stuck on some parts of the product. We are working to fix this asap. With Ben & Pablo’s help we already have updates done on design. Ready for Eng to pick up.

• Some team members have been sick since New Years. Health has been a big issue for lots of people in the last 12 months. After effects of Covid it seems. I think moving forward if we want to keep the pace we have and ideally be speeding we need to be healthier. I’ve personally started a 75 day fitness challenge to personally improve this. Day 30 today.

December/Jan Goals:

• Onboard First 7 Customers: Done (100+)

• Get security testing done: Not Done Yet

• Process 10 orders using Sendd: (4 Orders so far)

• Do something to get media attention: (Work in progress)

• Launch first growth hack: (Work in progress)

• Post 10 pieces of content on social media: (2 posts so far)

• Spend time with customers and release quickly. (5 Releases so far 28 updates.)

Feb/March Plan:

• Process $1000 in Transaction Volume:

• Process 15 Orders:

• Launch Growth Hack:

• Post 20 Social Media Content:

• Improve SEO for Sendd:

• Add support to product:

• Onboard 40 Customers:

• Attend EHF event in AKL:

• Launch 2 templates:

• Improve Sendd Branding:

Financials:

November Burn: $8000 NZD

December Burn: $1500 NZD

January Burn: $4800 NZD ($1,000 non recurring as award to student accelerator)

February Burn Estimate: $3600 NZD

Runway: 15 Months at $4800 NZD Burn, Unlimited below $4000 NZD Burn.

We reduced our burn by $6000 in December. Thanks to team members indicating they are good to continue without the cash to help the company extend our runway. I am personally also not taking anything from Sendd. All team members in Sendd have equity and are vesting monthly other than two team members that come to us via an agency in South America. The agency has denied allowing them to have equity.

Asks:

• We want to tell our story and if we ever raise capital we want the best investors on our cap table! If you know anyone that should be getting these regular updates! Do let us know!

Sendd is committed to helping the 99% of small businesses that make our economies tick. We care deeply about the problems that face this group. We want to live, breathe, and ship for small businesses.

From The Sendd Team,

Adi, Indy, Jordan, Ale, Pablo, Vlad, Rajib, Ben, Penny, Frank & Drake

PS: For those of you that don’t know what Sendd is (thank you Jen for reminding me) we are a platform for small business. We allow small businesses to create a digital storefront in 30 seconds. We allow them to sell products & services through one off sales, subscriptions and even tips/donations. We handle billing, receipts, order & customer management so you can focus on selling and growing your business.

PPS: If you want a demo of the product or want to sign up and help us user test. Sendd me an email and I’d love to help you get started!!

https://www.sendd.me/

We are so close!!! The team has been working massive weekends trying to get things live. We have a handful of things to get working properly, and then we should be good to go. We have security experts on standby to do an initial test for us before we open things up for customers.

I’ve been working on a pretty exciting low-cost marketing growth hack. The aim is to get this live as soon as the product is ready to go. More on this soon!!!

October/November:

The last two months have been a blur. We were heads down on building our product. October was a big push to get all the designs done that we needed for launch before Pablo left for his holiday in November. The engineering team’s hours ramped up trying to get the product ready to launch.

The Good:

• Met with one of our initial customers. The original intention was to onboard them during that meeting, but we weren’t ready. However, I was able to demo the product to them and answer all their questions. (Attached video on their thoughts. Less than 2 minutes.)

• Had an awesome in-person team dinner with Indy & Jordan in November. Met Jordan for the first time in person. Indy & Jordan both highlighted that they have never worked as hard as they are in their entire career as developers as they have while working on Sendd. This was a good thing. In their own words, the purpose, the vision, and the product, coupled with the tools we are using and the speed we are building at, has been the most rewarding and accomplished they have ever felt. This was incredibly moving to hear for me because I’ve been pushing the team, and they are responding with so much drive and passion.

• We expanded our initial customers. We will now be giving access to 7 businesses in this initial release. (I’m looking forward to sharing the live storefronts for these businesses shortly!)

• We presented to EHF Friendly Sharks. It was good to share Sendd with them and get some practice in pitching the business.

• The team has been rallying, and everyone is excited to get the product live. Special shoutout to Keez, who is not currently part of the dev team. He jumped on at 11 p.m. on Friday night to support the team trying to get things live. With Friday being a 1 a.m. night and then a whole weekend of work later with the rest of the team, we have a proper development release cycle in place. (Making sure we aren’t pushing to production without testing.) Also, a whole bunch of other improvements and bug fixes to try and get things live.

The Bad:

• We missed our target at the end of October for being ready to onboard a customer. This is my fault for setting an unrealistic deadline, and we will do better at sizing up work in the future. However, we did achieve lots in a short time frame in part because of that deadline. The backend team felt that if they were full-time, the deadline would have been achieved. The main problem being working 7-10 p.m. weekdays only allows 3 hours of focused time on solving a problem. Resulting in most problems being solved on the weekends where they have all day to solve it without almost 20 hours of lag time before you get back to the problem set.

• We still haven’t managed to tap into the design/branding resources we were hoping to get access to. This means we have not made any progress on the branding. Pablo being away has also meant that for November we aren’t able to move product designs forward either. I would love to have a budget to move faster on branding, but we are getting this for free currently, so we can’t complain much. I’m jumping on Canva and doing what I can myself for the time being.

• We are on the clock! At the lower burn level, we could effectively bootstrap the business indefinitely if needed. However, at the higher burn level, we have 3 months of burn left.

October Goals:

• Update customers on our progress: Done

• Get Shop working: 70% Complete

• Get Cart working: Done

• Fix UX/UI issues on smaller devices: Done

• Get end-to-end Stripe workflows Tested: 66% Subscriptions not live yet.

• Work through product spec and solve complexities: Done

November Goals:

• Create T&C and Privacy Policy for Sendd: Done

• Create T&C, Privacy Policy, Returns Policy Templates for Sendd Businesses: Done

• Apply to YC: Done

• Increase initial customers to cover use cases: Done

• Enable Order flow emails and receipts in Sendd: Done

• Onboard First Customer: (Not Done)

• Create Sendd social media channels: Done

• Get Shop working: 90% Complete

• Get end-to-end Stripe workflows Tested: Done

December Goals:

• Onboard First 7 Customers:

• Get security testing done:

• Process 10 orders using Sendd:

• Do something to get media attention:

• Launch first growth hack:

• Post 10 pieces of content on social media:

December Plan:

• Get the product live. Onboard the initial customers. Process some initial customers’ orders and figure out what the issues might be present. Find and remove bugs.

• Release V1.2 features and add some basic things like Settings to the product.

• Launch the growth hack I have in the works.

• Plan a launch event for Sendd.

• Sign up 20 businesses ready to go live on the product.

• Spend most of the month with the first 7 customers diving deep.

Financials:

October Burn: $8000 NZD

November Burn: $8000 NZD

December Burn Estimated: $8500 NZD

Runway: 3 Months at $8000 NZD Burn, Unlimited at $4000 NZD Burn.

Asks:

• We are going to throw a party of some sort! Leverage it for content and use it to highlight some of our awesome initial customers. If you’re in New Zealand and would like to attend, let us know!

Sendd is committed to helping the 99% of small businesses that make our economies tick. We care deeply about the problems that face this group. We want to live, breathe, and ship for small businesses.

“Sendd me the money.” - Every small business ever

From The Sendd Team,

Adi, Indy, Jordan, Ale, Pablo, & Keez

Learn more about our initial customers here: Initial Customer Profiles

August:

This month was all about finding and building out the right team that could help get the initial product built. With our founding developer Keez being under pressure at his day job and limited time moving forward we had to scramble to get new team members that could fill that role moving forward.

The Good:

• Found an awesome pair of back-end developers Indy and Jordan; Both have been on the job for a month now and smashing it, they are both based locally here in New Zealand.

• We also expanded the team by adding Ale (Front-End Developer), Pablo (UX/UI Design) from Colombia. Team members in Colombia are highly skilled and ultra cost effective.

• Locked in the first set of businesses we want feedback from on the product. Learning from these super customers will be critical in understanding our next moves.

• We have a new name!!! Sendd!!! We also picked up Sendd.me for our domain name. Currently our free invoice tool from the EZ Invoices days is moved over to Sendd. As we roll out the new product the invoice tool will become a sub page on our domain.

The Bad:

• Keez, our founding developer, who developed the initial invoicing product had to leave due to added pressure at his full time job. He will be missed and will always be part of Sendd as a shareholder to help us if we need his guidance.

• I got super sick for about 10 days and was out of action meaning the branding/UX/UI design work I should have been leading got delayed. Thankfully back to 110% now and firing on all fronts.

• We are on the clock! At the lower burn level we could effectively bootstrap the business indefinitely if needed. However at the higher burn level we have given ourselves 6 months to figure things out.

September Goals:

• Lock in first customers: Done

• Get Stripe Integration Finished:

• Get end to end Stripe workflows Tested:

• Update content and guides to Sendd from EZ Invoices:

• Google Authentication for Account Creation:

September Plan:

• The Stripe integration is critical. We need this to allow our customers to do one off payments, recurring subscriptions using our native link in bio/landing page experience.

• We need to resolve our authentication issues with Google so that new users can create an account on Sendd using both Google and Microsoft.

• I’ll be working to get things moving on the brand side this month. We opted for low fidelity grayscale UX/UI designs to allow the dev team to get started however we now need to go back and add colors and styling based on branding decisions.

• Super pumped to get the MVP in customer hands in October but prior to that we will have a small win when the existing Invoice product can start accepting digital payments via Stripe. This also helps us test our integration in a live environment not just with dummy data.

Financials:

August Burn: $4000 NZD

September Burn (Estimated): $8000 NZD

Runway: 5 Months at $8000 NZD Burn, Unlimited at $4000 NZD Burn.

Asks:

• Introductions to business owners that could have a recurring business model but do not currently. Examples: Nail salons, Education businesses, Mechanics, Lawn mowing, Personal trainers, Cleaners, Small/Early stage software companies.

• Ideas on the Brand: Colors, Styles, examples of brands doing a brilliant job. We want to make Sendd really modern, super fast and pick colors that stand out. Thinking like Monster Energy green, F1 Inspired styling theme.

• Feedback/Beta testing in October for our Platform onboarding, Payment Gateway Connection, Page Creation. Let us know if you want to sign up as a tester.

Sendd is committed to helping the 99% of small businesses that make our economies tick. We care deeply about problems that face this group. We want to live, breathe and ship for small businesses.

“Sendd me the money.” - Every small business ever

From The Sendd Team,

Adi, Indy, Jordan, Ale & Pablo