March 2026 Investor Update — Sendd

CONFIDENTIAL: Marketplaces, GoSweetSpot, Bank2Bank all Live. To the US soon! 🇺🇸

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.