We weren't expecting to write again this soon. In the last 30 days, Vela has done £2.1m of verified GMV, with a single record day of £99.5k.
A short update on what's changed in the twenty days since Chapter 03, and why it's brought our funding forward.
We expected the Reddit spike to settle. So far it hasn't. Verified GMV has grown from £211k at Chapter 03 to £2.24m today, £2.1m of it in the last 30 days, with a record day of £99.5k.
Purchases tracked each day have stayed above 1,000 and stepped up again in the second week. The people who joined in the surge are coming back to track more of their spending.
After the first week, roughly 27–33% of members keep coming back to track more purchases. The cohort is still young, so we're watching this closely, but the early indication is that a meaningful proportion keep using Vela after their first purchase.
~£21.9k of reward value has been requested to date, with ~£10.2k actually sent. That puts our cash acquisition cost at ~£2.90 per new member, and we're tracking ultimate redemption rates as the cohort matures. The retained-member figure is an early estimate and will firm up once the first cohort completes its D30 window.
Chapter 03 rated monetisation "Early." PLUS has since grown from 36 paying users to 150+, around 1.4% of active members, all from the same organic wave.
No cap on receipts tracked each month.
Double PlanetPoints on qualifying purchases.
Greater reward ceilings, faster access.
150+ subscribers isn't meaningful revenue yet. What matters to us is that 150+ people have chosen to pay £5.99 a month for a product that didn't exist a few weeks ago.
That growth has taken us from 1,623 to 6,027 observed retailers, and from 46,730 to 169,100 recognised products, in twenty days.
Every new shopper adds breadth to the purchase dataset behind Pulse, brand activations and our enterprise products.
This week, Vela and Nestlé signed a formal supplier / purchase agreement. It moves the partnership onto an established commercial footing, and anchors the enterprise line running into 2026.
Supplier agreement signed
The Q4 activation is contracted on that footing. £30k campaign reward budget each for Nescafé and San Pellegrino to begin with (Nestlé-funded), plus a £9k/month platform fee to Vela. Live end September. Our first brand-funded activation, and the first meaningful piece of contracted recurring revenue.
Being onboarded as a formal Nestlé supplier matters beyond this single campaign. It's the commercial foundation every subsequent brand-funded activation will run on top of, and it validates the shape of the model for the next Nestlé.
Every new member adds transactions to process, rewards to fund and load on a team built for a much smaller consumer base. The speed of the last 30 days has brought our capital requirement forward.
And with Nestlé now signed, we need the growth capital to service the partner properly and scale the revenue lines it opens up.
The bridge is scoped to a specific set of milestones. These are the ones we believe £300k genuinely gets us to.
Current burn is around £40k a month, roughly £20k of it fixed team cost and the rest reward working capital and tech that scale with the base.
Reward liabilities and referral economics as the base scales.
Support and community capacity to hold quality as inflow climbs.
Receipt processing, data enrichment and platform headroom.
Nestlé activation and Pulse commercial execution.
Existing shareholders who'd like to participate, or introduce investors who understand consumer networks, fintech infrastructure or loyalty, are welcome to get in touch.