Amid Russian Invasion, A Ukrainian Development Team Brought Outdoor Gear App SENDY to Life

The launch of SENDY, a new community-driven online marketplace for buying, selling and renting outdoors gear cofounded by adventure sports veterans Travis Rice and Cam Zink and CEO Ian deQueiroz, is a compelling business success story. But the behind-the-scenes story of the Ukraine-based team that developed and engineered it is one of human determination and triumph.

With SENDY, which launched in November 2022, Rice and Zink—respectively, a freeride snowboarder and a freeride mountain biker—identified multiple market gaps within their industry. One is an overall barrier to entry for adventure sports, some of which require a costly investment in gear. Another is an inefficiency in how used gear is redistributed throughout the market.

The idea was relatively straightforward: create an online hub in which outdoors enthusiasts could buy, sell or rent gear from within a curated selection.

In so doing, Rice and Zink sought to expand access to these sports for everyone and minimize the environmental impact of these activities by keeping gear from ending up in landfills.

Rice described the greatest challenges to accessibility in his particular industry, snowboarding. “You need a lot of equipment to be comfortable in the extremes of mother nature during wintertime,” Rice told me. “And then there’s the other unfortunate component of how resorts have continued to elevate the price barrier to get a ticket to go riding.”

“And so I think SENDY is a shining example of trying to bring down that barrier to entry for everybody,” Rice added. “The beauty of it, I think, is that people who actually acquire or invest in high-quality goods that are not low-end, single-use, cheap gear have the ability to keep that as an asset and turn it into both a return on investment and allow people who are trying to do these types of activities on a budget a better access point.”

SENDY took shape on a trip that Rice, Zink and deQueiroz had taken to Kelly Slater’s surf ranch, an immersive surfing experience in Central California. Rice and Zink, as the action sports stewards, had identified the possibilities for the gear-sharing side of the business, while deQueiroz—the former CEO and cofounder of HempFusion and now CEO of SENDY—brought a tech start-up and executive leadership acumen to the table.

For Zink, what really stands out about the marketplace is the fact that it’s created by, for, and from the community.

“SENDY is being proactive about not allowing certain gear on the app that’s spammy or people trying to unload junk,” Zink told me.

“The user is able to look through a curated collection of gear from top professionals to amateurs in all these other sports,” Zink added. “I sold a bike to someone, and they wrote to me about how it’s changed their life, being able to access a high-quality bike at a good price. And then I’m the compete amatuer in buying gear I don’t know about. I’m on there looking for used spearfishing gear; I don’t need a brand-new spear gun.”

Currently, the activities represented on the marketplace include snowboarding, skiing, mountain biking, climbing, cycling, fishing, hiking and camping, motorsports, kayaking, photo and video gear, running and training, skateboarding, surfing, team sports, travel gear, wakeboarding, windfoiling and yoga.

Since its launch, SENDY is gaining around 2,000 users per day and has seen nearly 13,500 total downloads, including 9,000 unique profiles created. That would put active users at 67 percent, well above industry standard.

“We are exceeding projections and very grateful for the warm reception from the outdoor community,” deQueiroz said.

But one particular group of people who brought SENDY to life stands out. The team of Ukraine-based developers and engineers who built the platform and shepherded it to its originally scheduled launch date of November 11, 2022—in the midst of the Russian invasion—defied all odds to do so.

SENDY is entirely developed and engineered in Ukraine, with work having begun in earnest in December 2021, before the Russian invasion.

“I selected the team based on extensive interviewing involving firms and individuals in many countries and chose our current development team strictly based on merit and gut instinct,” said deQueiroz. “As we began to work together on a daily basis, Zoom friendships quickly evolved and I became more aware how wisely I had chosen as the team moved at double the expected speed and we began to overachieve on timelines and feature sets.”

On February 24, 2022, deQueiroz, who resides in Hawaii, was on the phone with the lead project manager in Ukraine, Vlad, whose last name has been deliberately withheld. Vlad is Russian-speaking and originally from Donetsk, having fled the Russian invasion in 2014.

Though deQueiroz had asked Vlad to make arrangements for the team to be ready to leave Kyiv at a moment’s notice, neither thought Russia would invade so quickly, deQueiroz said.

Hours later, deQueiroz received another call from Vlad, this time from gridlock traffic on the expressway south of Kyiv as he tried to make his way to Poland. With his wife and precious few belongings in the car, amid early cruise missile strikes on the capital, Vlad was calling to apologize about needing to miss some deadlines.

Needless to say, deQueiroz wasn’t focused on workflow. He made travel arrangements for Vlad and his wife and urged them to keep driving toward the Polish border. When they arrived, men were no longer being allowed to cross the border from Ukraine.

“This is really just where the story starts,” deQueiroz said. “In the many months that have passed since we have overcome a great deal, deepened our friendships and built a wonderful company.”

The SENDY backend team hails from many front-line towns on the Eastern Front, including Mariupol, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Kharkiv. Amazingly, Vlad’s six-person team was able to continue work building the platform in the midst of a war zone and not only meet, but exceed, expected timelines.

“Missiles were literally hitting buildings next door,” deQueiroz said.

However, in November 2022, a week before SENDY’s planned launch, Russia began bombing power stations and critical infrastructure throughout Ukraine.

“I quickly realized I had no choice but to book last-minute travel into Ukraine and bring over Starlinks and generators, as well as meet the team I had worked so closely with for so long,” deQueiroz said.

On November 11, 2022, SENDY launched at 2 a.m. local time—on schedule to the day, overcoming all odds.

“Over the next week, I had the life-changing privilege of traveling across Ukraine, meeting our team and witnessing the strength, beauty and determination of the Ukrainian people,” deQueiroz said. “We took cover in subways, crossed through endless checkpoints, witnessed destruction on a scale not seen since World War II and had drinks by candlelight in a dark city at war.”

“What I learned from the last year is that humankind can live in any conditions,” Vlad said.

While the war continues, Vlad’s wife lives in Poland and his father works in ordinance disposal for the army outside of Kharkiv. Vlad’s mother and grandmother are in Kyiv, and his sister is in Sweden but plans to return to Kyiv this summer.

When we spoke via Zoom, Vlad expressed that he feels torn between continuing to lead the SENDY development team and joining Ukraine’s armed forces.

“It was a hard decision; I wasn’t sure what decision would be right,” Vlad said. “I liked and still like the project, and we have a great time; on the other hand, we have this war, we have casualties and everything else. Sometimes I think maybe I should still go.”

What makes the work meaningful? For one, SENDY is providing jobs in Ukraine. Not only does that provide stability, Vlad said, but in the middle of a war zone, sometimes it’s just nice to have something to pour energy and focus into.

He also stressed that there was no pressure at all from SENDY executives to launch the app on time; the motivation to do so came from the development team itself.

“I think we don’t have much to do except for working right now, and it helps to focus on something,” Vlad said. “It really helped some people who struggled with depression and anxiety and everything else, and probably it’s one of our medicines to prevent this kind of emotional state. We just know that something has to be done by a specific date and we are trying to achieve it.”

Vlad and his team also appreciate the creativity and freedom they’re afforded with their work on SENDY. “It’s a project where I personally and all my team, we can be creative in 100 percent of cases,” Vlad said. “We have data meetings, we discuss stuff, someone can raise their hand and say, ‘It would be nice to do this;’ I start thinking about it deeper and then I bring it to Ian.”

Even after SENDY’s launch, Vlad’s team has no shortage of improvements and new features to work on. There is no scheduled roadmap to rolling out the new features, which the team is developing based largely on user feedback.

Vlad, who has worked in the tech sector for about six years, enjoys the challenges of web development that come after launch, when the product is out in the world. “You build the product, and then it’s tested by real users and you have to rebuild everything,” he said.

“This ability to create something together with knowing users are using the product—[in previous roles] I was working on many products that no one uses,” Vlad added. “Also, it’s amazing when you receive feedback from users that the app is awesome, that everything is working great.”

Right now, Vlad’s team is working on the ability to add stock to items so that the app operates more like a traditional retail site. In effect, that means a user searching, for example, for a Travis Rice Lib Tech snowboard can see all the products’ variable colors and sizes on one landing page, rather than getting several slightly different product results.

Vlad allows himself to dream about what he’ll do when the war is over—though neither he nor anyone else knows when that will be. As this article was published, Russia had just deliberately carried out targeted strikes of residential buildings in Uman. In response, President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that a Ukrainian counteroffensive is imminent, filling Ukrainian citizens with hope that the war will soon be over.

Vlad most looks forward to reuniting with his wife and taking her on vacation. The couple had booked a trip for Sri Lanka in March 2022 that was, of course, postponed due to the invasion.

“It will be going somewhere on a beach and I’ll just drink rum and lay there and that’s what I would like to do,” Vlad said with a chuckle. He and his wife also plan to buy residental property and live in Ukraine.

A snowboarder himself—which makes the work on SENDY even more meaningful—Vlad also plans to meet up with deQueiroz after the war for a snowboarding trip. The SENDY CEO scouted parts of the country that would make for good riding and landed on the mountains of West Ukraine. Armed with a camera, the two will film and ride together.

“It’s just hard to plan something right now because everything can be changed,” Vlad said.

When Vlad was interviewed for this article, the U.S. had just authorized another $350 million in aid to Ukraine. He said that feeling the support for Ukraine from people around the world—and the fact that they would be interested in hearing his story—has been a powerful motivator on some of the tougher days.

“To all the people that support Ukraine, it’s hard to explain…” Vlad paused. “When you understand you have the support of almost all the free world, the world is a good place to live.”