SendOwl raises $4.5m in seed funding backed by Stripe

8 Dec 2021

Image: © Tatiana/Stock.adobe.com

SendOwl CEO Matt Plotke is a former Stripe growth lead who bought the creator economy platform last year.

SendOwl, a platform for selling and delivering digital products, has raised $4.5m in seed funding with investment from Defy.vc, Stripe and others.

Founded a decade ago, SendOwl helps creators across the globe to sell digital and virtual goods to buyers across multiple platforms including social media, websites and blogs. This is done via the SendOwl app, or through integrations with Stripe and e-commerce platforms such as Shopify.

CEO Matt Plotke, formerly head of growth at Stripe and a business operations director at LinkedIn, said that the creator-as-a-business model is a relatively new construct and SendOwl aims to use the funding to fill the gap in services targeted towards the creator business economy.

“It’s hard to appreciate the complexity that goes into building, marketing, selling and delivering an array of digital products, services, subscriptions, memberships or any physical product. And with SendOwl, I saw an opportunity to abstract away that complexity,” he said.

Plotke bought SendOwl last year from founder George Palmer, who started it as a side project because he was unable to find a reliable way to sell digital products directly to customers, according to TechCrunch. The company has come a long way since, leading to this seed funding.

To date, SendOwl said it has delivered nearly $2bn in value in digital and virtual products for tens of thousands of paying merchants across millions of transactions. Universal Music Group, Australian personal trainer and author Kayla Itsines, and a host of independent creators are among SendOwl’s clients.

The company said it will use the seed funding to further accelerate its growth and expand to offer new products to meet the demands of the growing creator economy. Some of the products sold on SendOwl include e-books, podcasts, online courses, live events and NFT pre-sales.

“The creator economy is booming, but existing e-commerce infrastructure was designed for selling physical goods,” said Bob Rosin, a partner at Defy.vc and a former colleague of Plotke from their days working at LinkedIn and Stripe.

“SendOwl makes it simple for any individual or business to easily manage, transact and deliver digital products and integrates seamlessly with the existing e-commerce stack, and has already demonstrated tremendous actions with tens of thousands of sellers around the world.”

The creator economy is also something that payments giant Stripe has been focusing on, with tools to help creators monetise.

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Vish Gain is a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com