Vend10: Year One — Start!

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, more don’t ever become profitable.

In 2010 — in the tailend of the GFC I thought I would take those odds and embark on realising an idea I had. My rationale was that in a global economic crisis, the only way is up! It’s advice I think many should take right now in 2020.

In October we are celebrating Vend10, 10 years since launching Vend, an idea that transformed the retail industry, and wow, what a 10 years they have been. I am proud we are the market leader in Cloud POS and omni-channel retail management, but Vend is now so much more than those two things combined. We are profitable and growing. Many will talk about the rollercoaster ride of building a business, but rollercoasters have seatbelts and safety rails. For a more accurate experience you need to hacksaw off the seat harnesses, remove random parts of the tracks and run the whole thing in zero gravity for extra lols. But still, the terror makes it fun, and what a view when you hit the high points!

Over the next 10 weeks I will share tales of lore from our 10 years. I will probably gloss over a lot of the bad bits, and survivor bias will be rife in any advice I may dish out. Take it all with a grain of salt to taste. But here are 10 things we learned over the last 10 years, starting with probably the most important bit of advice.

Start.

We have a mantra in Vend — JFDI. Be like Nike and just do it, but with extra f*#kn sass ;-)

SELLING THE VISION

Perfect is the enemy of good and often doing something, yes even half baked is better than not doing anything or taking too long to get it “perfect”. I launched Vend as an idea, and was promoting it before the code was even complete. To be honest in some of the pitches I made, Vend only existed in Photoshop.

But I started telling a story, to see if people even wanted it.

Even though Vend launched in 2010, let’s rewind a year. In 2009 before I committed to pursuing Vend, I decided I would cycle the length of New Zealand — solo. If at the end of the adventure I still thought Vend was a good idea, I would commit myself to building it.

Since 1995 I have seen the ups and downs of startup life in tech, and there were more downs than ups. Cycling the length of New Zealand seemed a sane thing to do and it was while on that trip I pitched the idea to everyone I met. I was raising money for a charity as I went so managed to raise some profile for that — crazy guy rides NZ solo. Along the way I was fortunate to spend time with folks who were in the NZ tech ecosystem (and sleep on their couches) and so I pitched Vend to them. I had printouts from Photoshop in my bike bags of this idea and what it could look like. Two of those folk became investors, Sam Morgan and Rowan Simpson whom I knew from Trade Me, also part of my startup journey.

I blogged and filmed the whole way on YouTube. Here is the video of the last leg, getting to Cape Reinga where I ask myself at the end — what now??

In January 2010 I started putting the word out. We were building a new platform for retail. Some say you should keep your plans to yourself so others who might compete don’t get wind. But if you don’t tell anyone then the people you want to know wont hear about you either. So I started pitching the idea of Vend everywhere I could.

HUSTLE AND MULE

On the 27th of January Apple made an announcement that would change the world of retail. The iPad. Before January was over I had a video imagining how Vend would work on iPad. With that video we were picked up as a finalist in a Silicon Valley pitch contest, Cloud Connect Launch Pad where we pitched new ideas for the cloud. Running POS on the cloud using iPad. We didn’t win the competition but half the finalists no longer exist, so I’d take that as a win.

Our video pitch was pretty homegrown but served us well as a video we then shared on our homepage for a year :-)

In 2010 the iPad wasn’t yet available in NZ, so I got Lance Wiggs, then friend now also investor in Vend to mule a stash of iPads over from San Francisco. At the same time Rod Drury — Xero co-founder and I pre-ordered iPads in NZ. Back then we paid $1,000 to get one of the first iPads in the market. I had been running Vend in an iPad emulator until then. Feeling the running of Vend on an actual iPad was awesome, like 10x better than that new car smell. I knew then Vend would be game changing.

FRIENIMIES AND FIRST CUSTOMER

That same month Square announced it would launch in May. Suddenly the industry was paying attention. I was told that Square would be the end for Vend — a month later I was talking to Square and we had shared API information and we were integrating the Square dongle into Vend. Square has been a long standing partner of ours for 10 years. Sure we compete in some places, but we also compliment each other in many ways for larger retailers.

Mid 2010 I was receiving emails from retailers around the world interested in Vend. They wanted to be on the beta list to trial our solution. One of these was a bike shop in Hamilton, a couple of hours south of Auckland. Matt, the store owner, wanted to open a new store and wanted Vend to power it. Nothing like a deadline to motivate you to get it launched.

I spent months driving between Auckland and Hamilton to get Matt set up, get feedback on Vend and make sure they were ready for opening day. Only a few things to sort out, like getting the receipt printers printing, the cash drawer integrated and a payment terminal ready to take payments. There were many late nights, all the classic hallmarks of startup life.

Matt had ordered his new hardware to run the POS — opting for a windows PC. Vend ran on any device so it was not a problem. The day prior to launch I ran through their printer setup one last time and my heart sank. The receipts were not printing. I had developed Vend on my MacBook, and all testing was on Mac and iPad. Matt wanted to use the browser version on a PC. As Vend was built in HTML5 and used Chrome or Firefox as the browser, it’s all the same on any operating system, I thought — except when it comes to printing. I had to rewrite the whole printing engine. With 12 hours until opening I knew this was not possible. The solution? — I bought Matt a MacBook. We plugged it in and everything worked. Opening day was a success. Sometimes you just need to find solutions to your customers problems, and do whatever it takes. That’s the other thing you hear us say at Vend a lot. We do the impossible. Two months later printing worked on PC too.

Just do it, talk it up, make commitments and then do whatever it takes to meet them. The first year of Vend we went from an idea, to a product to customers using it. The cloud was changing the industry in parallel and competitors were just starting their journey too. If I hadn’t launched Vend when I did I doubt we’d have the success we did. The first year was so pivotal and shaped things for the years to come.

Just F#$king Do It.

In the next post, Vend10: Year 2, I will write about having fun and getting noticed (more). It wasn’t all fun and games, but it was a good chunk of life at Vend ;-)