Upstock raised $3.5 million and grew across New Zealand hospitality

Upstock raised $3.5 million as it expanded across the New Zealand hospitality sector. Philip Fierlinger, Duncan Ritchie and others from the team behind Xero built it for wholesale ordering, which still ran on scraps of paper, texts and phone calls, and launched it during the first COVID lockdown.

We backed Upstock because hospitality wholesale ordering is large, repetitive and almost entirely manual, which makes it a strong fit for a marketplace that both sides use every day. Order volume compounds as more venues and suppliers join, since each new supplier gives buyers another reason to stay and each buyer gives suppliers a reason to onboard. The team came out of Xero and knows how to build software that small businesses adopt without hand-holding.

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