
Launch HN: OpenUnit (YC W20) – Software for managing self-storage facilities - taylorcooney
Hi HN,<p>I’m Taylor Cooney. My co-founder Lucas Playford and I are launching (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openunit.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openunit.com</a>) - software for managing self-storage facilities.<p>Lucas and I met 5 years ago at a startup in Toronto. Since leaving the startup, we’ve been looking for ways to “get the band back together” ever since. I would hack on side projects, such as an order-ahead food app and applicant tracking system for recruiting tech employees, but most of these fizzled out after a few weeks.<p>Despite our best efforts to get something started, we quickly realized that good startup ideas don&#x27;t just happen out of nowhere. Or do they? 12 months ago my landlord came to me with an offer: they wanted to sell the place I was renting, and they’d give me a surprising amount of money if I could be out with just a few days notice. Pulling that off though meant finding somewhere to keep all of my stuff while I looked for a new place to live. Within the first hour of searching, I discovered how antiquated the process of finding and booking self-storage is.<p>After digging in, I found that for many facility owners having the time, technical skills, and frankly, money, to piece together a system that lets customers rent online, is hard. If you’ve ever tried to find self storage yourself, you probably noticed that many of the small operators have horrendous websites that are slow, non-responsive, and don’t give you the ability to rent without picking up the phone. After talking to self storage owners directly, I also learned that they spend hours every single day doing back-office work that really should, and could be automated.<p>Since I was actively working on side projects, and I had just had this terrible experience trying to rent a storage unit, I decided to focus my time diving even further into the self-storage industry. I took time to research the tech used in the industry and connected directly with storage facility owners and operators to get a better understanding of the pain points of this large and, what appeared to be, technologically-backwards industry. Wanting to take the idea of “building something people want” a bit more seriously, I joined the Y Combinator’s online Startup School program (before it became a Continuous Program) to work more formally on what would later become OpenUnit. After Startup School, I was invited to take this idea out to Mountain View for an interview with YC. Two months later Lucas and I had quit our jobs, the band was back together, and we were on our way to California.<p>The initial idea was to build a marketplace that makes it easy for people to find and instantly rent a storage unit online. But after speaking with more storage operators and hearing the same themes over and over again, we thought, why not be even more ambitious? Why not build a product that solves the problems of the renters AND facility owners? It turns out that self-storage generates $48 billion in rental revenue a year. But, while you might see big players - Public Storage, Extra Space, CubeSmart etc. — in downtown cores, 74% of all self storage facilities are small and self-reliant. And they can’t afford expensive software.<p>As a result, the bad software they end up using creates terrible business inefficiencies and a lackluster customer experience. When I rented my storage unit, I experienced this firsthand. For the most part, large enterprises can spend enough money patching together systems to deliver an acceptable customer experience. But, for mom-and-pop operations, that is done with shoe leather - or it’s not done at all. Instead of just building a marketplace, we were going to build a truly affordable, all-in-one management ecosystem.<p>So here we are. We provide self-storage facilities exactly what they need — merchant solutions, lease agreements, websites and more to provide an amazing customer experience. We designed OpenUnit so that a typical facility can get up and running fast and with zero paperwork. We also tailored the features we’re offering to meet the unique needs of small operators first. As a result of this, our hope is that the entire experience is less overwhelming than competing management tools. Our enterprise package for facilities with &gt;5 properties is 15% more affordable than anything else we’ve seen in the market and customers get a lot more than what’s included with the other storage solutions.<p>Surprisingly, we&#x27;re seeing an increased level of interest due to coronavirus. Many operators and facilities are looking to adopt a contactless move-in process (think eSignatures for rental agreements, with customers managing their own profiles&#x2F;information and payment methods), which is something we’ve kept in-mind, and can be accomplished out of the box with OpenUnit, keeping employees and customers safe.<p>As a team, we’re firmly focused on the web: the core technology that powers our applications on all platforms. It’s hard to pin down a name for this stack, but it’s a majestic monolith, built using Ruby on Rails. We embrace a “HTML over the wire” architecture, of server-rendered HTML, and “sprinkle” bits of interactive JavaScript. Season with Redis and ElasticSearch, we should have all we’ll ever need. For the foreseeable future anyways. We’re taking a privacy-first approach to customer data and use lockbox, which aims to make encryption as friendly and intuitive as possible for Rails.<p>If you have experience or if you have close friends, relatives, or colleagues that are in the storage space, please reach out! We&#x27;re keen to get the community&#x27;s input, in the comments below or at hn@openunit.com. After reading this, don’t be surprised if you start to notice the number of self-storage facilities in your city.<p>Thanks so much, and we can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
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applecore
Great to finally see some competition in this space.

Like a lot of other lesser-known industries, private equity has consolidated
all the top self-storage software management solutions.

SpareFoot acquired SiteLink[1]. The combined SpareFoot and SiteLink were
acquired by Cove Hill Partners[2], a private equity firm founded in 2017, and
merged with storeEDGE[3], a third company, to form Storable[4], the company
behind SiteLink, storEDGE, and SpareFoot. Storable just acquired Easy Storage
Solutions[5], a fourth company, a few months ago. SpareFoot, SiteLink,
storEDGE, and Easy Storage Solutions are now all the same company.

[1]: [https://www.sparefoot.com/self-
storage/blog/20604-sparefoot-...](https://www.sparefoot.com/self-
storage/blog/20604-sparefoot-news-2018/)

[2]: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/cove-hill-acquires-sparefoot-
si...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/cove-hill-acquires-sparefoot-
sitelink-1522350278)

[3]: [https://www.storedge.com/merger](https://www.storedge.com/merger)

[4]: [https://www.storable.com/](https://www.storable.com/)

[5]:
[https://www.insideselfstorage.com/suppliersvendors/storable-...](https://www.insideselfstorage.com/suppliersvendors/storable-
acquires-self-storage-software-provider-easy-storage-solutions)

~~~
agent_007
Thanks for this post. I own a self storage company and use Easy Storage
Solutions and had no idea Storable recently acquired them. I enjoyed working
with a smaller, privately owned software company. Knowing this has peaked my
interest in Open Unit. Taylor - this could be a good marketing angle to take.

I have submitted multiple feature requests to Easy Storage Solutions but none
of them have been acted on. If you guys are open to feedback I'd love to get
involved. We could use my facility as a testing ground. I have 250 units over
15k sq ft.

~~~
taylorcooney
We should connect over the next few days. I think this warrants a further
conversation between our groups. Please send an email when you’ve got a moment
- I can be reached at taylor@openunit.com. Since Day One, Lucas and I have
included operators in the discussion to dictate the functionality and we’d
love to have you included at the table as well.

------
jmarchello
I spent some time working for a company in this exact space. My recommendation
would be to integrate a 3rd party accounting/ledger management product rather
than building your own. That stuff gets messy real quick and next thing you
know you're dealing with accounting more than actually improving your core
value offerings.

~~~
taylorcooney
I got pretty in-the-weeds with the accounting stuff[1], and had thought about
reaching for a 3rd party ledger, like Gnucash[2] or beancount[3]. The basics
are pretty simple, but I've tried to be thoughtful about the kinds of details
that most companies get wrong when they're trying to do things like track
balances: using floats for money, allowing transactions to be amended or
deleted[4], etc. There’s two parts to this puzzle: the accounting method you
employ that keeps an audit (whether it be single or double entry accounting)
and the rules governing accounting events that get trigger by the system.

The latter is where real difficulty and liability lies; an event, such as a
rental payment, triggers a series of transactions that must be financially
sound and sufficient for meeting the expectations of an audit. There were a
few other considerations but that really is the core framework. Where the real
work begins is implementing the triggers, or events (like I mentioned above),
that sets off a set of entries and making those financially sound. I've been
able to achieve some basic rules exclusively for the self-storage space whose
types of business transactions are very similar, but the truth of this can
only be revealed by third party auditors. It leads me to believe that it's
very difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a universal system for all
businesses and industries since the events that trigger entries are specific
to each system.

Happy to riff on this a little more if you're interested!

[1]:
[https://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/tutorial.ht...](https://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/tutorial.html)

[2]: [http://www.austintek.com/gnucash/ncsa-gnucash-
talk.html](http://www.austintek.com/gnucash/ncsa-gnucash-talk.html)

[3]:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/100tGcA4blh6KSXPRGCZpUlyx...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/100tGcA4blh6KSXPRGCZpUlyxaRUwFHEvnz_k9DyZFn4/edit)

[4]: [https://medium.com/@RobertKhou/double-entry-accounting-
in-a-...](https://medium.com/@RobertKhou/double-entry-accounting-in-a-
relational-database-2b7838a5d7f8)

------
mNovak
Nice to see some work in this area--seems like one of the few industries still
dominated by 'mom and pops' (my parents run a self storage too!).

Definitely nice to see a company with a more creative business model than just
charging $10/mo for some feature set, too

------
daxaxelrod
Platform makes sense to me, great work putting it together. I notice that
you're only charging for basically stripe's transaction fee. Can you provide a
bit more color as to your monetization strategy?

~~~
lucasplayford
Great question. We recognized revenue from the difference between the volume
discount we get on our negotiated interchange rate and what is charged to the
customer. For larger customers with more than a couple of facilities, we have
SaaS fees for gated and premium features as well. Because our focus is serving
the long tail of the self-storage market - mom-and-pops - we understand that
much of the software currently available to them is either too expensive or
too complicated for their smaller operations. We want to make sure that they
have a simple pricing model that doesn’t nickel and dime them for the core
features that they rely on to run their businesses.

~~~
ianmobbs
Have you talked to mom-and-pops about this pricing model? Though "2.9% + $0.30
per transaction" isn't difficult to understand, if they've never heard of
Stripe, it is difficult to understand _why_ that's what they're being charged.
It might be easier to digest if given a flat monthly fee based on usage (e.g.
$X for 100 units, $2X for 500 units, whatever)

~~~
taylorcooney
We've been exploring pricing based on the square footage of the facility for
larger operators. Generally, real estate operators think of costs in terms of
square feet rather than number of units. But I agree that there may be an
easier way for operators to digest this, especially those that are not
familiar with Stripe that may question the "\+ $0.30 per transaction"
structure.

------
benatkin
I had a great experience with Safeguard Self Storage in Cutler Bay, FL in the
Miami area. The only thing lacking that I could see was their website and
automated emails sucked. It might be worth trying extra hard to get them as a
client! I was just a small single-unit customer and didn't know them
personally. They just did well on a bunch of points: proper billing, easy move
out, security, cleanliness, price.

~~~
lucasplayford
We will definitely check them out. Thanks for the heads up!

There are so many operators out there that are amazing at providing stellar
customer experiences in spite of the tech challenges that they are facing.

Many of the operators that we speak with just want to work smarter and not
harder, as the old adage goes.

Unfortunately, when your tech stack is lacking you end up working harder to
provide a great experience for the customer.

We designed OpenUnit to deliver on both ends of the equation with awesome
customer-facing touchpoints and backend tools that automate workflows to help
operators get back to provide those amazing personalized experiences like you
had at Safeguard.

------
shiftpgdn
I notice you guys mix the .com and .ca version of the domain on your site.
Might be worth running through and converting them all over to the .com .

~~~
taylorcooney
It took us a while to get ahold of the .com from the owner in Michigan. After
numerous attempts to reach the owner - including a Postmates order, a flower
delivery and a hand written Christmas card - we bit the bullet and grabbed the
.ca to start. openunit.com eventually expired, went live on the GoDaddy
auction site and I was able to pick it up for $400 after a bot tried to outbid
me. Over the next week weeks I’ll consolidate the two domains - if developer
operations is of interest, please reach out to me at taylor@openunit.com and
let’s talk DNS records.

~~~
jpincheira
congrats on the domain Taylor! Way to go man.

~~~
taylorcooney
You should hear the story about how we got the Twitter handle. It starts and
ends with Argentina...

~~~
yitchelle
What's your twitter handle so I can follow you on that platform. Cheers.

~~~
taylorcooney
Our twitter handle is @openunit
([https://twitter.com/openunit](https://twitter.com/openunit))

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mywacaday
It looks like McAfee has listed it as a parked domain:

Your requested URL has been blocked by the McAfee Web Gateway URL Filter
database module. The URL is listed in categories that are not allowed by your
administrator at this time. URL:
[https://www.openunit.com/](https://www.openunit.com/) URL Categories: Parked
Domain Reputation: Unverified

~~~
taylorcooney
Woh, are you familiar with this? I've never had to navigate around a flagging
like that. Thank you for bringing this you my attention.

~~~
mywacaday
Looks like its still blocked.

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sharemywin
My first professional software job was writing a windows version of of self
storage management software in the 90s. It was pre-internet so the last thing
I was working on was using pcAnywhere to connect to a central location to
upload the nightly changes in the database.

I also remember connecting to the gates was tricky.

~~~
lucasplayford
That’s amazing!

You’d be surprised (or maybe not), that there’s still quite a bit of legacy
software kicking around on stand alone desktops out there.

Most facilities have shifted to the cloud, but there is still the odd facility
that runs everything locally and processes their monthly rent roll manually.

Gate and security system APIs are also much easier to work with now for sure.

------
Andrewstein
Having gone through the process of self storage recently I am surprised and
not surprised to see this. It sounds like such a compelling product and I can
imagine you're going to make the lives of the small business owners running
facilities very happy. Great work peeps :)

------
thedangler
Hello, I tried emailing you @ hn@openunit.com and got about bounce back from
google. That address isn't setup for outside addresses. Regards

~~~
taylorcooney
This is working now. We use G Suite to create email aliases, and for some
reason the permissions automatically set to "Private".

------
jakearmitage
Beautiful design, btw.

~~~
lucasplayford
That’s our man Taylor. We’ll be building out the rest of our design team in
the near future.

~~~
mb_72
Agreed, looks terrific. I found one small spelling error - "Digital recipets"
\- when I was looking through the page.

~~~
taylorcooney
We now offer "Digital receipts" (I just pushed up the fix)! Thank you for
catching that.

~~~
praktur
couple more small copy suggestions:

\- In large top image of dashboard, tab says "Reccuring" ("Recurring")

\- "security right out-of-the-box" (not typically hyphenated)

\- "Custom to-do's lists" ("to-do lists")

\- "Integrated per-transaction pricing we don’t charge different rates for
different credit cards." Should there be a period after "pricing"?

\- you don't have consistent usage of the serial comma (or lack thereof)

\- "...designing OpenUnit from the ground-up" (not hyphenated)

~~~
taylorcooney
You rock. Thank you.

~~~
praktur
Glad to help. Main site is beautiful and product seems like a great market
fit. This kind of review is something I really enjoy doing (weird hobby, sure,
all hobbies are a little bit unusual). I'm always available for more of this
kind of thing. Email in profile.

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RIMR
The trend of taking proprietary, close-source software and slapping an "Open-"
name on it is bad form, but otherwise this looks like a good solution.

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verdverm
Is this open source?

~~~
taylorcooney
We're not open source at this time but if there's a large demand from
facilities we may consider open sourcing certain parts of the product (such as
the CRM or bookkeeping).

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dontatmepls
Big HN Energy! Congrats to Taylor & Lucas - one to watch, for sure.

~~~
lucasplayford
Thank you. Appreciate the kind words.

