
Launch HN: UpKeep (YC W17) – Basecamp for Facility Maintenance Teams - ryanchan001
https://onupkeep.com
======
ryanchan001
Hi everyone! My name is Ryan and I am a founder at UpKeep (www.onupkeep.com).
I am a bit of an HN noob, so please excuse my noobiness :)

I started UpKeep in 2015 to mobilize and modernize maintenance software. I
used to work in the manufacturing industry where I saw this type of software
being used, but all on a desktop. Technicians, as you may know, are always out
in the field, but the software they used was all desktop based. I started
UpKeep to give technicians the ability to record their field data from
anywhere without needing to be tied to a desk.

If you got through that full paragraph, you rock! Most people think
maintenance is boring, but I tend to think it’s pretty awesome—heck yeah.

Anyways, I am happy to answer any questions!

We are currently in the Winter 2017 YC batch. And if you aren’t in the
maintenance industry or have any facilities to manage, here are some things
you can ask about that I think might be more interesting to you!

-I am a solo founder in YC (there are some in YC so it’s definitely possible!)

-I was a chemical engineer turned iOS developer

-When I first started UpKeep I literally had no idea how to code, but I learned over the last 2 years (it was slower for sure)

-I worked on UpKeep during the crack of dawn hours while I still had a job to pay the bills for about 1.5 years before jumping into it full time about 7 months ago

-I was working out of my mom’s garage for the past 2 years until YC (now I am working out of my girlfriend’s parent’s guest room—I would say that’s an improvement)

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WhiteOwlLion
Hi Ryan - Congratulations on a maintenance management software. I currently
support Maximo for a 1,500 person organization with 100 facilities
technicians/supervisors using Maximo on three different shifts.

I'm glad you're working on a mobile app (iOS & Android) because enterprise is
really slow to make a product that is usable for technicians. EzMaxMobile &
Interloc could be your competitors.

Who do you think your competitors are?

Do you have a product roadmap for what you plan to build out as features? Will
this be based on customer requests, or do you have market areas you're clearly
trying to target?

Having some test items, assets, and locations would build out the demo/starter
a little more.

For Time screen, bigger increments might be better such as 6 minute (0.1 hour)
or 15 minute (.25 hour) increments.

Having screenshots and explanations of each role would be useful. I logged in
as Admin, but I'm curious what a technician sees on smartphone. Also, how does
a requester submit requests?

I can see mom-and-pop shops that might use this for their small business,
invoicing, and sending automated updates to requesters (customers). You might
consider a stripped down version for individuals.

I gave you a plug on the Maximo LinkedIn discussion group.

~~~
ryanchan001
This is an awesome comment. Maximo is pretty much the gold standard for asset
management in enterprise. I don't see Maximo as a direct competitor today, but
we'll get there! Watch out IBM :)

While I've never personally used Maximo before, I've seen it be used by
several of my colleagues and friends in the industry. Whenever I see them use
it, it hurts a little bit to be honest. I have a friend who actually works for
LA county and she is their Maximo manager. She basically takes calls from
technicians out in the field and inputs it data in for them. I recently asked
her to pitch UpKeep to her boss about trying out a mobile solution (apparently
IBM stopped developing new tech for their mobile solution for some reason).
The response she got from her boss was that field techs are aren't tech savvy
enough and the only reason she has a job is because of that. Definitely upset
me a bit to hear that, but it also gives me motivation to see how much more
there is to improve in this industry.

I think our most direct competitor in the small to medium sized business
industry is Fiix software. I think they have a great platform, but I am hoping
we'll win out because we are almost fully invested in creating a mobile-first
product for field technicians. At the end of the day if field techs input
better data into the system, managers will have higher quality, more reliable
data to make informed maintenance decisions.

Regarding our product roadmap, we do 1-2 week sprints given the need at the
time. Right now we are still focused on making a better tool for field techs.
The next big thing on our list is making inventory management within UpKeep
seamless. I think we have a great work-management tool, although we are
constantly improving, but there are some things on the inventory management
side that I think we can improve a lot on. In regards to industry, my
background is in manufacturing, but we actually have a pretty diverse market
for UpKeep. Right now we fit really well with small to medium sized
facilities. Restaurant franchises really love us, clubs, and smaller
industrial manufacturing is our sweet spot!

Our goal for UpKeep was to really streamline the request process. We hear from
a bunch of our customers that they are tired of receiving a request via email,
phone call, text message, whatsapp, what the so many different ways! So we
tried to consolidate that all into UpKeep. A requester can open up UpKeep, go
to the requests tab, and hit the big "+" button to create a request, they can
set up email forwarding so emails they send go directly into UpKeep, they can
go to a URL that links to the company's UpKeep account, and more!!!

Anyways, thanks so much for your comment and thanks for the plug on the Maximo
LinkedIn discussion group! Would love to chat more and hear your experience
with Maximo and your thoughts as a Maximo user and what we can do to improve!

~~~
WhiteOwlLion
> Inventory

In Maximo, there are different storerooms you can have with bin assignments
within each storeroom. Not sure if you need that kind of granularity (bins)
depending on how often technicians actually add materials to a work order (wo)
or add parts to an invoice.

> streamline the request process.

I think you guys have done a great job here. Service request status checks by
e-mail without a password makes it really simple. Enhancement could be custom
header & footer with customer logo. CNAME so Requestor page looks like it is
part of the company's web site.

Suggestions: Include completion notes and the technician(s) responsible for
the work. Especially with residentials, the tech has permission to enter your
home and you may not be present to view/supervise the work. The notes help
fill that gap. Maybe include status change date stamps too. Maximo has a WMATL
(Waiting for Materials) status which is useful if a required part is
backordered and work can not start immediately.

> Maximo

A very complicated suggestion but if you built an UpKeep module to work with
the Maximo MBO (API), then you could market the iOS or Android app as just a
proxy client. Since Maximo's front-end is a visual mess, providing an
optimized workflow and screen adds great value.

------
nonrecursive
Congrats on your launch, this looks really cool! And I love your story!

Did you do the design, too? What's the tech stack? How do you stay motivated?

~~~
ryanchan001
Regarding how do I stay motivated...

Won't lie, there's been some dark days. Especially in the beginning with
_zero_ users, negative $$$ (basically supporting UpKeep with my paycheck), and
working alone in mom's garage.

But what kept me motivated through this period was just this idea that I was
learning SO much in such a short period of time. I _loved_ it. I basically
asked myself if I'd rather pay to go to a bootcamp and learn to code or do an
MBA _or_ try and start my own thing and learn with UpKeep! I chose UpKeep and
I just tried to learn something new and challenge myself every day.

Now, I am really motivated by our current customers using UpKeep. Watching
them use our software and seeing how it actually has a significant impact on
their business and workflow is _awesome_. I wouldn't trade it for anything
else. When people say they actually "love" UpKeep it gives me all the warm
fuzzies :)

------
koolba
On Firefox the footer overlays atop the pricing table. Not sure why though:
[http://i.imgur.com/O1ost32.png](http://i.imgur.com/O1ost32.png)

That aside, looks interesting. Some of the language could be improved. Off
hand it's not apparent what differentiates "Request User" and "Requester
User".

What's the A/B consensus ( _asking HN crowd, not you specifically, as this
should be a solved question_ ) on the testimonial links at the bottom of the
page? As someone with a tech background they make the entire site look cheesy
to me though I can understand if non-tech people (i.e. the majority of your
market base) may think otherwise.

Is "UpKeep Maintenance Management 2015-6" the name of the company or a
copyright disclaimer? If so you're missing the (c) and it's already out of
date.

~~~
vegashacker
I'm not an actual potential customer, but my 2¢ is that I was impressed when I
saw Hilton and Chick-Fil-A. (Came to report the same issue, but on Safari.)

~~~
ryanchan001
That's awesome. I am always skeptical of putting big brand names up there
because I feel like it really takes away from our product. I get that we need
some market validation, but I've always had this thing where I just really
want people to try out UpKeep themselves to tell for themselves how awesome it
really is!

------
alberth
Ryan

Another question, hope you don't mind but find this app interesting.

Question: who's the primary user who submits the work request?

E.g. What user would be taking the photo found below from your app screenshot

[http://m.imgur.com/tD2ZjHF](http://m.imgur.com/tD2ZjHF)

Would the technical be the person who initiates the work order? Or is some
random employee of the company the initiator? I ask, because if it's the later
- does that imply that every random employee of the company then needs to
install the UpKeep app. E.g. Secretaries, marketing people, etc - all need to
install UpKeep. If that's the case, isn't that prohibitive for use?

~~~
ryanchan001
Sure! So here's the most common use case

Employee A notices that there's a broken piece of equipment and wants to
submit a work request. This is typically someone who is not involved in the
day to day maintenance of the facility. Instead this is normally a employee,
cashier, executive, marketing, operator, etc.

For companies that have a lot of employees, we provide them with a dedicated
URL, what we call their "Company Request Portal", to submit work requests. So,
like you said, they don't need to create an UpKeep account for every single
user which would be super prohibitive. Instead they take this link and either
embed that web-page in their company website, or have that link saved
somewhere all employees know where they can submit a work request.

Regardless of whether the request was made via the "portal" or through the
application, the tickets get funneled into UpKeep. It sends a notification to
the "Admin" of the group which then has the option to "Approve" or "Reject"
the request. When they approve it, they are typically assigning the work order
to one of the their maintenance technicians. When the maintenance technician
updates a work order, both the admin and the requester are notified about the
new status of the request :)

~~~
alberth
Follow-ups questions:

1\. How do companies educate their employee base on where this portal is? I
imagine this is something that many employees will never use in their entire
lifetime at a company.

1b. Isnt is more intuitive for an employee to simply call their helpdesk and
report a maintenance issue. Shouldnt the focus of your product be to have help
desk employees submit the work request on behalf of Employee A? Since I
imagine most employees are just conditioned to call their help desk for any
type of issue they have. In which case, now you'll have to compete against
competitors like ServiceNow who dominates in help desk software.

Edit:

Please don't take this as me hating on your product. I don't. Quite the
opposite. I'm just really fascinated by what your created. Hope you succeed
and interested in reading your response.

~~~
ryanchan001
Thanks and don't worry 1 bit! I love this conversation and the insightful
questions you are asking.

1 - Email blast! And it depends on the type of company. If you are a property
management company with lots of employees you're right a lot of people won't
use it. Then UpKeep becomes a more internally facing tool for admins to enter
in requests and dispatch jobs out. BUT if you are a maintenance heavy company
(industrial, manufacturing, etc) you are used to submitting work requests and
tickets in every single day.

1b - Yes! So basically the requester normally has the most information. If
they can take a picture and send it in with the work order, it is soooo much
more descriptive and helpful to the admin user. They can also call it in, and
UpKeep works in both ways. But it adds additional overhead to the admin users
to be manning the phones at all times.

At the end of the day, UpKeep works in both scenarios and it really depends on
the workflow of the company! :)

~~~
WhiteOwlLion
If someone calls, you can pretend to be a requestor submit a service request
on the caller's behalf using his/her e-mail and phone you ask over the phone.

The confirmation e-mail can reinforce:

1) check request status online 2) create new requests online

Customers that prefer to call will continue to call, but those that prefer the
portal will save you time and submit online.

When the business is closed, customer can submit non-emergencies online as
well.

------
mgav
Another idea to consider testing:

Simplify your pricing page by eliminating the "enterprise" column and
replacing it with text, like:

"Our ENTERPRISE SOLUTION has everything in the Pro solution, PLUS a robust
Enterprise Dashboard and Custom Integration / APIs"

------
mgav
@ryanchan001, Congratulations on your very good progress.

Consider A/B testing the home page with your A+ clients, like Mercedes, at or
near the top of the page. These alone might be enough to keep someone on the
fence reading.

Best of luck.

------
alberth
Hi Ryan

I'm confused by the pricing.

I went the pricing page and it wasn't clear to what, if anything, the service
cost.

Just FYI.

[https://onupkeep.com/pricing.php](https://onupkeep.com/pricing.php)

Edit. I really like the intro video by the way.
[https://youtu.be/oX7Lak7o0qI](https://youtu.be/oX7Lak7o0qI)

~~~
ryanchan001
Oh man! Okay that's definitely on us--we are trying to through a design update
to fix that up.

But here's the 411

We charge only for technicians and the admin users-so that means you can add
as many people to your group that submit requests (ie. hey the HVAC system
just went down). We've got a free trial which is based on usage (first 25 work
orders are free).

Sorry if that's not as clear as it should be and thanks for your input!

~~~
stevoski
What does "Here's the 411" mean?

~~~
alexandersingh
Good sir, I believe I may be of assistance:
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=411](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=411)

~~~
ryanchan001
Haha okay yeah maybe I didn't make that up in my head!

------
alberth
Ryan

From my iPhone, pricing on the pricing page doesn't display at all.

[http://m.imgur.com/kyDPO3n](http://m.imgur.com/kyDPO3n)

For an app that's going to be used predominately from a mobile phone, you
might want to double check your entire website from a mobile browser to ensure
its displaying correctly.

~~~
ryanchan001
A+. Thanks for pointing that out. Pretty embarrassing on our end, but yeah we
still have some work to do :)

~~~
alberth
Ryan

One more thing. On the last page of the PDF pricing page

[https://onupkeep.com/UpKeep_CMMS_Brochure.pdf](https://onupkeep.com/UpKeep_CMMS_Brochure.pdf)

For the "billed annually" pricing option, it's saying it only cost $40. That
implies is only cost $40 for the entire year.

I think that's a typo. $40 billed annually is not what I think you mean. I
think you mean $40 x 12 months = $480.

Because it reads as if it'll only cost $40 total for the entire year when I
think you mean it'll cost $480 but you save if you buy up front.

~~~
ryanchan001
I totally get you. It's kind of embarrassing because that actually is our
second most visited web page and we've got a few bugs on it.

I really really appreciate your feedback though! I think all of this is super
helpful for us to improve and better communicate with our users.

------
mparis
Hey Ryan

Congrats on the launch! Super impressed by what you have accomplished as a
solo founder. Keep up the good work! What would you say has been the most
difficult aspect of flying solo? Have you been leveraging platforms like
UpWork or a PaaS/BaaS to help with development on so many different platforms?

------
DougHenn
6 Days late but I'll toss this question out anyhow... What programming
languages did you focus on?

------
takinola
What is your customer acquisition strategy? Who is your typical customer? I am
curious how, as a single founder (initially) working on this on the side, you
were able to both build and market your service?

~~~
ryanchan001
Awesome Q. Believe it or not, this is a pretty crowded industry with a lot of
legacy solutions that have massive marketing budgets. I knew that I couldn't
compete with them on a dollar per dollar basis trying to buy clicks through
adwords and marketing towards managers, so I haven't bothered to go down that
route... yet. Instead I have been playing to UpKeep's strengths. We created a
tool for technicians and have a beautiful easy to use mobile application to go
with that. So... We've been trying to drive all of our traffic to our mobile
applications and encourage bottom-up adoption (technicians tell their boss
there's this awesome new app called UpKeep! We should use it). I think
marketing it this way, just out of the nature of our strategy, led us in the
hands of lots of small-medium sized businesses, or smaller silos into large
enterprises where they get more governance over the tools they use. We've seen
a lot of successful users in the facility management space from coworking
spaces, restaurant franchise owners, and smaller manufacturing groups.

A common use case for UpKeep is that someone sees a broken piece of equipment,
pulls out their phone, opens up UpKeep, snaps a picture, and sends it off to
the technician for repair. The technician now has a prioritized list of
his/her tasks for the day and can easily follow up with requests!

In terms of how did I both build and market with a full time job... I didn't
do any marketing for UpKeep in the beginning. I had the most common
misconception that "If I built it people would come". In the beginning, UpKeep
was a free application for everyone, and I viewed it more as a hobby as I was
learning to program. It _slowly_ started gaining popularity in the "free to
use" category for business applications and it was fueled all by what a cool
app that's completely free.

Now... If you ask about the transition from a free product into a paid
service... I felt so so bad doing it because we actually upset a lot of users
during that transition. But yeah that's a whole new story :)

------
ankitsoni
Hey Ryan,

This looks pretty awesome. How many times did you apply for YC before getting
in :)

~~~
ryanchan001
I actually only applied once and got in. I still had a full time job when I
applied, I had no connections to the YC community prior to applying... and I
don't know if the YC partners know this, but I actually did the entire
application + video in <30 minutes.

I remember doing the app from my mom's garage when my girlfriend was like,
"hey Ryan, don't you think you should spend some more time on this before you
send it in if it's important?" My response to her was that there was probably
no way I was going to get in so I didn't want to put that much effort into the
application.

I might be speaking for YC, but I think the thing that was more interesting
was our actual product and where we'd gotten it to more than a beautiful
polished application and video.

------
narenst
Congrats on the launch Ryan! Upkeep looks great.

Did your previous employer know that you were working on this for such a long
time? How did you pull it off?

~~~
ryanchan001
Basically the story behind that was that I used to work as a process
development engineer at a manufacturing company. I always wanted to start my
own thing and learn how to code, so I took a community college class about iOS
after work from like 6PM-9PM 2-3 days a week. In all honesty, the class didn't
really help too much, BUT it set some pretty hard deadlines that I was forced
to meet. I think I told my boss that I was taking some programming classes at
a community college, but he didn't really ask too many questions about it. He
probably thought I was crazy cause it didn't have anything to do with chemical
engineering.

Anyways, after starting the first version of UpKeep and leaving my job as a
process development engineer, I got my first real job as an iOS developer by
showing my interviewer (and my future boss) this awesome new app that I was
making! My bosses were always very supportive because it pushed me to learn
more (plus I have a feeling they thought it was going to fail). Now it's time
to show them what we're made of!

------
vning93
Congratulations on the launch! This is amazing, and what's more amazing is
your ability to do this as a solo founder - keep it up!

~~~
ryanchan001
Thanks! Being a solo founder definitely has its positives and negatives. I
think everyone's situation is different and we always make the most out of it
regardless if you're a 1 person operation or part of a big big team.

------
buildly
Hey thanks for sharing this! I'm curious about what your experience is like as
a solo founder in a program like YC

~~~
ryanchan001
So full disclosure: I just started YC and we are only about 3 weeks into the
program out of 12 weeks. So.... What I am about to say is without the full
picture, but here's what I can say so far.

It's not too different than before :P. YC is very very hands off. I went to a
pretty large public university and it sort of feels like that. There's a bunch
of really awesome people, but there won't ever be anyone to hold your hand to
make sure don't jump off a cliff. You or I need to seek out the right people
and make sure to connect to those that would be best suited to help the
business!

So, with all of that being said, I guess what I can say is that the
experiences of being a solo founder are pretty identical to the experiences of
being a solo founder in YC.

I'll elaborate more about some of the challenges I went through and some that
I still do go through! But if I have bored you by now you can stop here hah.

I think as a solo founder you just go through different set of struggles, some
easier and some more difficult than having multiple cofounders. At the end of
the day we always just make the most out of our situation regardless of what
that is (ie. don't force yourself to have cofounders or not have cofounders if
the stars aren't aligned). To give you an idea of some of the struggles... I
worked completely alone in my mom's garage for almost 2 years! I had a remote
offshore team helping out with some of the work as we grew, but for a long
long time it was just me. I actually hired my first in-house employee 2 weeks
ago and he's been super awesome so far--what a game changer!

Anyways, going through this path was the first for a lot of things for me. I
made a ton of mistakes that sometimes I wished I could've just bounced ideas
off of someone else with from time to time. It was the first time I had ever
programmed, so even getting my development setup took _way_ longer than it
should have, trying to market, sell a product, price a product, set up HR,
design, legal, omg I am getting overwhelmed just thinking about at all of the
stuff that I learned. But anyways, it was super rough at times just not
knowing.... and having conversations with myself about whether or not I am
making the right decisions. _But_ the caveat to all of this was that I learned
a tremendous amount in a short period of time and I made really quick
decisions without ever feeling paralyzed by discussion. A lot of the time I
made the wrong choice, but I learned! And for that... I am super grateful :)

~~~
buildly
Fascinating! Thanks so much for sharing!

~~~
ryanchan001
Yeah of course!!! It's been a crazy journey and it's just getting started!

------
suralil
Congrats Ryan! Site looks great.

~~~
ryanchan001
Thanks!! I always think there's still so much room for improvement, but I
think it's one of those things that if you look at _anything_ for too long,
it'll start looking funky. It's really cool/nice to get positive feedback
though!

------
jonnyyan
great work!!!

------
cocktailpeanuts
Off topic, but is "Launch HN" now a thing? Or is this some reserved namespace
for YC companies? Been seeing this last couple of days on HN front page and
curious.

~~~
dang
It's a new thing we're trying out for YC W17, and we're still fiddling with
it. This is the third one so far, the other two being
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13366964](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13366964)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13474042](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13474042).

The idea is to occasionally replace job ads (which have been the content of
YC's reserved slot on the front page since forever) with YC startup launches.
Since startup launches are more interesting than job ads, and since freshly-
launched startups are typically too new to need job ads, this feels like a
win/win: HN's front page gets more interesting, and YC's reserved slot can
benefit more startups. We'll make sure that there isn't both a job ad and a
launch post on the front page at the same time, but that's not done yet.

Edit: We started with Launch HN posts getting placed on the front page
similarly to the posts in the second-chance queue
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380)),
and never ended up changing that. So occasionally there are both job ads and
Launch HN posts on the front page at the same time, since the two mechanisms
operate independently.

------
erader
Congrats Ryan! Glad to see another face from OP in the Bay Area

~~~
ryanchan001
Thanks! If you are who I think you are, it's been a while! :)

------
elcapitan
"Basecamp for Facility Maintenance Teams" sounds like straight from some
"Startup idea generator".

~~~
ryanchan001
Yeah.... I get that it sounds a little bit gimmicky. But the main point is to
really give people a quick 5 word summary so people have a good idea of what
it is we do!

