'It's Not a Sprint, It's a Marathon': Fredrik Edeland, CEO of Sendify

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

Sendify – shipping for everybody else.

What is the origin story?

Sendify is a fast-growing SaaS Enabled Marketplace that offers small businesses a simple and cost-effective shipping solution - so that less time and money is spent on logistics and more on running a company. Shipping Management platforms have previously been developed for larger companies, which has left the small and medium-sized enterprises without competitive shipping solutions that are targeting the small businesses’ logistics needs and their price sensitivity. In other words, there has been a huge segment that has been overlooked - until now.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

People on the team are handpicked for who they are; they are genuinely nice individuals with a big passion for building something challenging together. Having a stable foundation and tireless grit for challenging the industry are the key ingredients.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

Building another startup.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

Success means providing small businesses with the smartest shipping solution out there. Hence, seeing our base of happy customers grow, from all over the world, is our main metric.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

I would probably steer this insight to customer insights; we see the exact same need of our customers in the markets we are present in. This is the opportunity that we are going after.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

We are excited about the SaaS Enabled Marketplace that we have created and how we can help businesses with our unique technology. The aggregated buying power of the many small businesses that book their shipping through Sendify, enables Sendify to generate marketing leading margins.

In addition, Sendify runs subscription incomes through the system from larger companies, as well as other incomes such as insurances, ultimately enabling a hybrid revenue model. Altogether, Sendify has developed an income-generated machine that combines transactional and subscription incomes, at the same time as Sendify creates value for both ends of the marketplace.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Don’t take things too seriously. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

Optimize for the marathon.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

On the same note as above - it comes with age I guess ;)