Compounding, fast.

Five times the volume. In sixty days.

The numbers above are what happened in the 60 days since Chapter 04. Vela has gone from scaling to compounding: the verified-purchase base is widening, more of the weekly actives come back, more of them convert to PLUS. All three move together now.

The clearest single tell: our daily GMV record now stands at £256k - nearly 3× the Chapter 04 peak, and the trailing-30-day GMV line looks very different to the one we were plotting in July.

Half our launch cohort still tracks purchases two months later.

Of the 2,686 members who joined in the launch window (29 July - 7 August), 54% were still tracking purchases at Week 4, and 50% at Week 8. For a consumer app, that's an unusually flat curve.

Most consumer apps lose 80% of users in week one and the curve keeps falling. Vela loses the casual tier in the first week, then the engaged tier settles into a very flat band - the purchase-tracking habit either sticks or it doesn't, and when it sticks it sticks for months. That flat band is the base from which PLUS converts.

Dr Will's: our second supplier agreement, kicking off October 28th.

After Nestlé in August, Dr Will's becomes the second brand to sign a commercial agreement with Vela. Activation goes live on 28 October.

Agreement signed · live 28 October

A £10k campaign budget to launch Vela's second brand partnership on-platform.

Dr Will's is a UK-born better-for-you brand in a category we already see heavy signal from on Vela. The initial activation is contracted at a £10k campaign budget, of which £7k goes to member rewards and prize draws (points, tickets and three SquareMeal vouchers), with the balance covering Vela's activation and platform work. Live on 28 October.

Same commercial pattern as Nestlé. Brand funds the reward; Vela delivers verified, in-category purchases; attribution is receipt-level, not survey-level.

£10k

Launch campaign reward budget

28 Oct

Activation live on-platform

£84k /yr potential

Target run-rate value if activation renews quarterly

Two signed brand partners in 60 days. The pipeline behind Dr Will's is deeper than it was going into Chapter 04, with several active conversations we expect to close before the next update.

Health & Beauty went live - our second verified category.

The rebrand at the start of the year - rewarding better choices - gave us permission to extend beyond food. Health & Beauty was the first of those. Boots, Superdrug, Space NK, Lookfantastic and Cult Beauty are now receipt-level recognised and attributable in the same engine as FMCG.

Then a third: Fashion is live.

Same logic, next category. Choosing a well-made piece over fast fashion, buying second-hand on Vinted, picking a brand that pays its makers - better choices the receipt engine now recognises. Full support for the 15 fashion retailers Vela members buy from most.

FMCG basket averages ~£28; the fashion retailers above average ~£62. Materially more verified GMV per receipt, and a credible second-category pitch to apparel brand partners (actively running). Together with FMCG and H&B, Vela now powers three of the four categories that dominate UK weekly consumer spend.

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Basket summary · FMCGFull Ocado shop scored at 80% - "really strong shop" - with Reward Boosts active for brand partners

Vela Score · Health & BeautyLine-item score with ingredient flags · 76% B rating · Phenoxyethanol marked High Risk

Vela Score · FashionGarment-category scoring applied to a Next socks pack from Vinted · Impact A, Benefit C

Dr Will's × Vela · campaign£7,000 in rewards & prizes · activation surface live from 28 October

Dr Will's Hat-trick · challengeBuy all three · +2k points, +50 tickets. Any retailer counts - a brand-funded reward routed through Vela

Challenges hubFibre, Hydration, Tesco Streak (PLUS), Dr Will's Hat-trick · the surface that lifted PLUS net-adds from ~27 to ~50/week

Step tracker · PLUS1K / 3K / 5K / 8K milestones · up to +250 points a day · the first PLUS-only feature paying for itself in subs

Step tracking · daily viewLive progress against the day's 8K goal · streak counter and points earned in one glance

Member insights337 purchases tracked, 1,536 items, 78 retailers · the shopper-level view behind the data product

Rewards · PLUS tierAirbnb £50-£150 experience · aspirational redemption live for PLUS subscribers

The Vela Score sits under every tile. A product's score blends Benefit (ingredients, materials) with Impact (packaging, sourcing). Fashion starts from a garment-category baseline then adjusts for materials (ECONYL, organic cotton), traits (GOTS, Fair Trade) and brand tier (second-hand, sustainable, fast-fashion). Health & Beauty moves with ingredients (Retinol, botanicals) and packaging (refill, recycled). This structure is what makes the data licensable at line-item level - and what Nestlé and Dr Will's pay to place inside.

What we shipped since Chapter 04.

The product team has been running flat-out. Four things worth calling out.

Product → paying subs, directly. Each dashed line is an app release. Net adds averaged ~27 a week before 3.1.2 and ~50 a week after it shipped - the first clear case of PLUS-only features (step tracking, PLUS challenges, PLUS spin wheel) paying for themselves in subscription conversions. 3.1.3 held the pace; the next release should hold it again.

Fuller roadmap in the investor deck. Headline from here: Q1 is targeted for the enterprise-tier brand integration (Nestlé-scale, subject to final scope & budget confirmation) plus the next verticals.

Support turned a corner; replies back under target.

The surge in member demand from late July wasn't something we'd staffed ahead for. Vela was still a product-led team with no dedicated customer-service function, and the scaling teething issues that came with that were real.

Since 29 July we've handled 4,725 conversations with 3,069 unique members. A month ago, replies were sliding - only half of member messages got an answer within a working day in September, and by month-end 236 had been waiting longer than that.

Over the last three weeks - at the same volume, through our second-busiest week on record - 78% of messages were answered within a working day, and the median first reply is now 5.5 working hours. Two of the four support targets are met; two are still off, but moving in the right direction.

What changed was process - and an AI agent. From the end of September the team works from one shared Vela Team inbox, and we built an AI support agent that triages new conversations, drafts replies, and flags member issues at source. In October it enabled us to reach over 2,000 members before they had to chase us - 1,717 affected by a fulfilment partner's voucher issue got a direct route to a replacement; 327 got their voucher-review decision; 224 whose vouchers had to be voided got an apology and a points credit.

Two gaps remain. Fewer than half of messages get a reply inside 6 working hours against an 80% target, and around 100 member messages have waited more than a week for a reply. Vouchers are still 56% of new conversations, and one message in five is a member chasing an update - so better in-app voucher status is the single biggest lever on inbound volume, and it's shipping next.

Source: Crisp export, 28 October 2026. Member messages exclude team-sent emails, spam and simple thank-yous. Working hours Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm UK. "Oct" covers the three full weeks 5-23 Oct (1,014 messages); "Sep" covers 1-30 Sep (1,696 messages).

Expanding the India team to stay ahead.

We're opening six intern roles: one in Design, two in Product Operations, three in Engineering. All start as interns with a clear path to full-time - the same route every current member of our India team of five has taken. Model works: standards high, growth sustainable, delivery cost low as volume climbs.

The intern-to-full-time path is proven: four of our existing team joined that way and are now core to engineering, design and ops. Lets us build quickly and support commercial customers properly without compromising on cost or quality.

The vertical roadmap.

The sequence below is the shortest path from one proven category to a receipt-verified network across the UK consumer's weekly spend.

What £11.2m of verified GMV changes.

A verified-receipt network is only worth as much as the data under it. Here is how the unit economics have moved since Chapter 04 - and, to be transparent, where our revenue sits today versus where the opportunity is.

Why the GMV number matters.

The £11.2m isn't the business - it's proof the dataset underneath is real. The commercial opportunity on top is a licensed data product: SKU-level baskets for the same shoppers across every retailer, a view the existing UK alt-data stack covers only partially (card data has no basket; retail panels are mostly brick-and-mortar; loyalty data is one retailer only).

To be clear about what's demonstrated and what isn't: market validation is promising (7 engaged buyers, consistent qualitative read), no licence is signed yet. Converting conversations into licensed revenue requires a stable panel, consent coverage and data-quality workstreams still ahead of us. On panel history, two years is the ideal; six months is workable at a stretch (and is what buyers have told us they can begin back-testing against). Every week of compounding builds that history; the first paid licence is the next commercial milestone.

Full working at veladatevaluemap.netlify.app.

Building on momentum.

Following the successful close of our initial £300k round, we're opening a further allocation of up to £500k at the same £12.5m valuation. This is an additional allocation, bringing the combined amount to up to £800k, with runway sized to carry Vela through to the targeted H1 2027 data-licensing milestone.

The capital is scoped to convert our data buyer pipeline into our first commercial licensing agreements, launch further brand-funded campaigns, and continue improving operating efficiency - the three measurable milestones below.

If you'd like to participate or increase your investment, please get in touch.