Retail
This week we are talking about going global! Well actually Vend was global from day one. Our first 10 customers were from all around the world. We started our international “presence” with a few secret beacheads prior to “officially” opening offices. We did a lot in air-quotes in the
Vend10
Culture eats strategy — that’s what saved us when we didn’t have any strategy. Mel was on board right from the beginning (and even before), and she set the tone for culture at Vend. Friendly, quirky and hard working. Mel can give you more background on exactly how and
Vend10
In the second installment of the comprehensive history of Vend (glossing over the boring stuff) I asked Nick — Vend employee #1 to tell tales of getting noticed. Nick spent the first couple of years responding to all the support tickets I didn’t have time to, and in the meantime
Vend
A decade is both a short and long time. A long time for a squirrel they only live for 10 years, short to a redwood tree which can live 2,000 years. But for a startup it’s quite a milestone. The vast majority don’t make it that far,
Introvert
Hello, I’m Vaughan and I’m an introvert. The weird thing is most people think I am an extrovert. This is probably because of my TEDx talks on doing impossible things and being weird, and how I have spoken to audiences of thousands of people. Perhaps it is because
Startup
The UK and New Zealand are quite literally a world apart. The distance between London and Auckland is just shy of 10,000 miles, which at one point in time would have taken around 100 days to travel by sea. Sounds like a great adventure, though not quite as comfortable
Diversity
We are hiring in product and engineering (well in every team actually) at Vend at the moment, and we have amazing applicants come through, but one thing is very apparent: although we have many women, LGBT+, nationalities and cultures here we are not as diverse as we want to be.
Entrepreneurship
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong woman stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the one who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
Startup
At the start of the year I stepped out of the CEO role at Vend to enable us to find someone with mad skills to take us from $20m of revenue to $100m. We appointed Alex Fala (trusted right appendage and all round phenomenon) as acting CEO and I immediately
Culture
Dear start-up heroes, No, not you founders out there, although you are insanely heroic. I am writing to the women and men who fought tirelessly along side you in those critical early years. When it was all about to fail at any moment. To the heretics and weirdoes who
Startup
A few weeks ago I stepped out of the CEO role at Vend. Alex (CFO & Head of Strategy) and I mixed things up a bit. He jumped into the Acting CEO hat and I stepped out of the CEO role to take on the Founder & Chief Product Officer
Entrepreneurship
I founded Vend almost 6 years ago, and it’s amazing to look back on what has changed since then. I have grown a bit older and a lot greyer. It’s no longer just me, I have a couple of hundred amazing people around the globe on the team