AAA backs Upshift! Today is the LAST DAY to invest. Time for LIFT OFF!
We now have just HOURS left in our campaign and we are trending! Invest TODAY. This is your last chance and we will not extend. Share our campaign with 5 friends and on social media: www.republic.co/upshift
Upshift just got accepted into Avanta Studios! This is an insurtech/mobility accelerator program to support our growth that comes with:
- mentorship from industry and domain experts
- investor intros, pitch events, and fundraising support
- access to proprietary anonymized insurance data to train AI models
- up to $100,000 in funding on a SAFE note
From their website:
"The Avanta Studios program enables startups to partner with Avanta Ventures and CSAA Insurance Group to jointly explore new markets, business models, and technologies. Avanta Ventures, the venture capital arm of CSAA Insurance Group, invests deep industry expertise, resources, and financial support to create products and services that offer value to AAA Members."
So we are lifting off from Republic into an awesome insurtech and mobility accelerator program backed by Avanta Ventures, CSAA, and AAA. Insurance innovation is critical to scale Upshift and there is a great strategic fit. We are super excited.
Here are some big milestones we've hit while on Republic:
- Raised $674,000+ funding from 2,950+ investors - more than any campaign currently on Republic
- Raised $620,000 in vehicle debt financing to scale our fleet
- Added the RAV4 hybrid SUV to our fleet which has proven wildly popular
- Done a photoshoot of the RAV4
- Built out a 5 person remote engineering team led by an ex-Pinterest engineer
- Launched new member web and mobile apps for iOS and Android
- Rebuilt our concierge delivery logistics mobile app and dispatch software
- Developed our new digital ad campaign: "Don't buy this car." working with a growth marketer
- Made adjustments to our pricing, website and policies working with a behavioral psychologist
- Gotten tons of press and interviews including Technori and The Rideshare Guy
- Written up as a "Top Seed Company to Watch" by a partner at e.Ventures
- Established vendor relationship and integrated 2 "test mule" vehicles with telematics hardware
Upshift is topping the charts for the most investors on Republic for the second week straight!
Here's what's in store for 2021:
- Integrate vehicle telematics (Feb) from the largest Tier 1 vehicle components manufacturer, who normally only works with global car makers and rental car companies- that's how big they think Upshift can get. Members and concierges will be able to locate, unlock and drive our fleet via app without any keys. Deep integration of real-time connected car data to streamline our delivery logistics and data collection, reduce downtime and improve member experience, build out data analytics, and develop our predictive demand algorithm.
- Build a predictive algorithm to automate our dispatch. Integrating data from our connected cars, concierge delivery app, member app, and backend system to automatically schedule which concierge delivers which car to which member and when - no matter what last minute changes happen.
- Rebuild our backend system to customize it and to fully automate all core processes in one place. We've been running on a SaaS admin panel until now, but it's time to grow into a custom built backend system that automates our processes, connects all of our technology, and truly meets all of our needs by putting everything we do in one place.
- Begin testing EV integration and building out our mobility hub network with charging infrastructure. Upshift can use delivery to match people in cities who want electric vehicles but don't have a garage to parking garages with charging. We can also address range anxiety by providing a hybrid car for longer trips.
- Building out our growth funnel and optimizing our conversion. Developing a new digital marketing campaign ("Don't buy this car.") to clearly articulate our differentiation and value prop and build awareness, rewriting and reorganizing website copy and layout to highlight our commitment to sustainable and ethical business practices, and creating a personalized and simplified conversion funnel.
- Building out our Upshift for Business platform both on the sales side as well as updates to our software to facilitate account management for teams. We anticipate more companies going back to the office a few days a week looking for alternative personal transit solutions.
- Scale up our fleet, team, and systems and prepare to launch new markets. We want to 10x our scale in 2021 and then launch our first new market to begin a national rollout to attain our long term vision of having your own "car in your pocket" anywhere you go in the world.
Our cities are literally littered with cars taking up space in our streets. In cities like San Francisco, about 1/3 of people buy or lease cars that they only drive about 1-3 days a week and 6,000 miles/year. 4-6 days a week they are just sitting parked. These people don't commute daily by car but often have a recurrent activity that is hard to do without a car - like hiking, surfing, or skiing, a part time commute or visiting clients. Buying a car costs hundreds of dollars a month in car payments, parking tickets, insurance, repairs, not to mention the headaches of dealing with it all. They tell us every day "I was going to lease a car, but then I saw Upshift and it sounded like a better fit for my lifestyle." Why? Because they want the convenience of a car at their doorstep when they need it, without having to think about anything- especially the headache of parking in the city. Upshift is building a platform to enable these people to fractionally share cars. Cars cause almost as much environmental impact to produce as they do to drive- even if they are electric. So let's make fewer of them by sharing, and make them all eco-friendly.
There isn't too little parking in cities. There's too much. In some cities, as much as 60% of land is given over to cars! And we give it away practically free. It's just $12/month to get a permit to park your car in front of your $3,000/month apartment in San Francisco. All you need to do is repark it 1-3x/week for street sweeping to avoid a $90 parking ticket! Despite ALL the existing new transportation services today, there are still about 230,000 underutilized cars in San Fransisco alone which can be replaced by a fractional car subscription service like Upshift. If we replaced them all, we could eliminate ALL street parking - an area the size of Golden Gate Park - and turn it into green space: cafe and restaurant seating, lanes for bikes and scooters or busses and trains, expand the sidewalk, heck just jackhammer up the asphalt and PLANT A TREE. Literally anything would be better than everyone leaving a 4,000 pound piece of car litter on the street. Not to mention that's a $1B total addressable market opportunity JUST in San Francisco. And there are tons of cities around the world just like it.
So join us on our journey. Let's make people's lives easier, our cities better, and our planet inhabitable. Let's replace cold and dead steel and rubber with warm and lively trees and cafes in our streets. Let's make the air cleaner to breathe and reduce our eco-footprint to address climate change. And while we're at it, let's make it way easier for everyone to get to where they need to go. You have just HOURS left to be part of Upshift. Invest today. Let's do this together.