January 2025 Investor Update - Sendd
135+ Sign Ups!! Full Sendd!! Jan Investor Update 2025
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:
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!!