2021, Year in Review at Carted & What’s Coming
Wow! What a year!
Starting 2021, I never imagined we would be where we are and so quickly — it’s December already.
As a startup CEO, I think it is really important to reflect on what has been. With eyes always on the future working together at pace towards each goal, it’s sometimes easy to forget to stop and celebrate the wins along the way.
There are so many moving pieces when building a company from scratch — day-to-day things seem small and it can feel like you are not moving anywhere, however as you zoom out, you start to see the vision come to life.
We have made leaps and bounds with the technology and roadmap however what I really want to talk about is the incredible team we have built this year.
Having started the year as a team of four working remotely out of Brisbane as the pandemic continued to sweep across the world, in April we signed the lease on an incredible heritage building in Sydney’s Surry Hills and got to work setting up our office (aka Carted House).
A year in review wouldn’t be complete without mention of the fact that, following a very tight fundraising process with the help of our existing investor, Stew, we managed to close one of the largest Seed rounds in Australia, led by Blackbird. Having some of the world’s most experienced investors validate your idea suddenly takes it from a good idea to a reality, and there is nothing like that thrill. It was go-time!
Talent acquisition was a huge focus for me this year and seven months on, we close out 2021 as a team of 14 ‘Carters’ with incredibly diverse backgrounds and skillsets across everything from engineering, operations, design, and people and culture. The hustle and energy at Carted House is contagious and I am so proud of everything they continue to achieve, every day.
Our Engineering team, Calum, Miroslav, Taylor, and Mykola have worked incredibly hard to create something that doesn’t exist — search and checkout on top of a billion products and millions of stores. This trailblazing team is tasked with building Carted from the ground up. Each new technical problem is met with innovative solutions.
Sayak and Nilabhra, our Machine Learning Engineers, are working on our NLP-powered application that can extract attributes from all different product pages across the web.
A special shout-out goes to Sayak who has continuously managed to find extra time to be involved in the developer communities and give back. Congratulations on your awards this year including second place in NASA’s Flood Detection competition.
Gilbert has been under the pump since his first week designing out both our marketing website pages, designing the product, and shopping destination. We cannot wait to show you what’s coming!
Michael came from Canva (we love the Blackbird community) as our Senior Technical Writer. He has taken care of everything in regards to words and content. Finding someone who is both a developer and a wizard with words is no mean feat, which is why I am so thrilled Michael has joined us (along with his pup Sebastian 🐶).
Vanessa is Carted’s Head of People and has really proven in what has been a hugely challenging year for that part of a business in particular that you don’t have to be in an office to create a culture. Carters were sent care packages during lockdown and Vanessa worked hard to ensure everyone felt supported and connected.
As Carted grew exponentially in 2021, Vanessa onboarded all the new starters with all their Carted equipment and created a delightful introduction to our team, whether they are in the office or elsewhere across the globe. She continues to work on ensuring we are establishing a lasting company culture that we can all be proud of.
After coming into the office for an interview, I phoned Kimia and she jumped at the opportunity to join 24-hours later even though she didn’t have a formal title! She has been integral to building out the operations and strategy side of the company directly with me.
Kara came from StitchFix in California and joined our team as Head of Category Management. Considering the lack of overlap with the team due to timezones, she has done a phenomenal job getting up to speed and building out our categories for Carted’s search engine and product feed. She is our first US hire and in the last two weeks has added Andrew and Andressa to the category management team.
A few acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Mike for kicking Vop off the ground and helping us build out the initial Carted team. We wish you all the best as you move on to your next venture in the NFT and gaming space.
To all of our investors, you have been incredible to work with this year. Thank you for all your support. To Michael at Blackbird, Wendell at Tidal Ventures, and Stew at Ten13, I appreciate all your input and ideas that you have given us since you backed Carted.
In this strange new world of social distancing and ever-evolving health orders, I won’t lie — the day I came back into the office after lockdown and saw you, I wanted to give you all a hug. Between the baked goods and highly competitive team Drawasaurus, the pace at which we continue to work is not only manageable but so enjoyable and I thank you all so much for your continued passion. I can’t wait to get the rest of the team to Sydney in the new year. We have started to work on some incredibly technical problems and seeing you all break through them is incredible.
What’s ahead in 2022
Heading into the new year, we have so much planned with the product, team, and public launch! 🚀
There will of course continue to be a huge focus on engineering with the team, led by Calum and Miroslav, continuing to build on our vision of making commerce anywhere possible. The Carted vision is to empower and provide the building blocks for developers, founders, and creators to build any commerce experience they dream of. A key milestone will be the API offering launch with our first customers powering new commerce experiences.
There are some really exciting senior hires to the product, engineering, and growth teams to be announced early in the new year. Each new role is integral to helping Carted surpass each next milestone.
The product is of course nothing without the team behind it bringing it to life, and if 2021 has continued to teach humankind anything, it’s the importance of supporting one another and focusing on mental wellbeing. I’m so excited to be bringing the global Carted team together for the first time for our biannual Carted offsite. 🌴
I wish you all a safe and enjoyable holiday season, see you in 2022. 🥳
P.S. If you are looking for your next thing and want to join us on the Carted journey visit our open roles.
