New Zealand-based point-of-sale startup Vend is looking to expand quickly in the U.S., and it’s made a big hire to lead that charge. Anton Commissaris, who had served as an executive at Mint.com and later Intuit has joined the company as its President of U.S. operations.
Vend offers a cloud-based point-of-sale system that is designed to help small and medium sized businesses for track sales and inventory, without investing heavily in proprietary equipment. It can be accessed on any PC with access to the web, or used via the iPad as well.
The company has more than 8,000 store owners in more than 100 countries using its product. But so far, much of its business has come from its home market of New Zealand and neighboring Australia, but it’s looking to expand into other markets in a big way.
In the U.S., it will be relying on Commissaris to help build and grow the team, in an effort to take on other vendors in the payment and point-of-sale space. Commissaris had been SVP of revenue and business development at Mint prior to its purchase by Intuit. Once acquired, he joined that company as its director of revenue and business development for a few years. Since then, Commissaris has served as Chief Revenue Officer of Apsalar and COO of Credit Sesame.
At Vend, he’ll be in charge of a small but growing team in North America. The San Francisco office will have four employees, in addition to another five that are in Toronto. Current company headcount is 75, with offices also in Auckland and Melbourne.
A lot of his work will be spent on working to grow the company’s customer base in the U.S., but also working with partners to integrate with other third-party payment and inventory systems. It already works with payment processors like PayPal and Auth.net, as well as startups like Swarm Mobile and Stitch Labs.
Vend has raised more than $10 million since being founded in 2010, including an $8 million round of funding that came from MYOB founder and Xero investor Craig Winkler, Seek.com.au co-founders Paul Bassett and Matt Rockman, as well as The Milford Active Growth Fund and Point Nine Capital.
