We're relaunching the member web app!
Launching new member web app!
Exciting news! We are in the process of relaunching our member web app. This is all the secure webpages after you click on "Join" or "Log in" on our marketing website including account creation, booking requests, and account management. We have had technology in place here for a long time but it was initially "designed" by a backend engineer and it wan't very easy to use or confidence inspiring! This is the first properly designed version of our member web application since we launched so now it looks really professional and is much more user friendly with more functionality. We are super excited to share it with you. You can see the new signup flow live on a desktop at https://go.upshiftcars.com/users/subscribe. You can see what our paying subscribers will see to manage their bookings and account past the paywall here on web and mobile.
Website updates: pricing changes, blog, 404 page
Along with the new web designs, we are instituting our new pricing model with a $750 one time activation fee and monthly rates dropped $50/month to $209/$389 for 4 and 8 day/month plans. After we get some data on how this is working, we'll test out taking out the taxes in to bring monthly prices to $750 activation fee + $189/$349 + tax. This makes our pricing more like a lease payment, enables us to capture more money up front, reduces our monthly pricing, and eliminates the 3 month minimum commitment. It also makes per use trips feel cheaper, which we hope can drive more usage for shorter "errand/essential shopping" trips, especially midweek where we are seeing some uptick in member demand. We are also rolling out a new Monday-Friday "Commuter" plan which we expect can help capture new midweek members who may not feel comfortable taking transit now with the health risks and/or don't want to get locked into a long term lease if their job situation is insecure. We also think this could be an opportunity to add an EV to our fleet mix as we could charge the car Friday and Sunday nights, providing it to members on weekends to run errands and midweek for commuters. We have discontinued the 12 day/month plan. We also connected the blog to our main website and added a fun new 404 error page (try to spot the "easter egg"!)
Upshift is now offering hazard pay to concierges, partial re-openings in CA
We are doing our best to minimize health risks for our delivery concierges, including providing surgical and N95 masks, hand sanitizer, gloves, and disinfectant wipes. They are fully disinfecting cars between each trip and only need to meet in person for <25% of deliveries and pickups. Any time they do need to meet, it is outdoors with 6' or more distance and they are wearing a mask with no physical interaction needed to exchange the keys. We plan to enable fully keyless access within the next month using telematics to eliminate all need to meet. Even so, we are also going to offer 20% hazard pay to our staff who are on the front lines, so they will get paid up to $30/hr (a $5/hr bonus). We will backdate a bonus to March 16th when the shelter-in-place ordinance takes effect and extend it until the bay area reopens non-essential businesses. We expect congress to pass additional federally subsidized hazard pay but don't want to make our staff wait until that happens. As always, we still offer them sick pay with no need for any written doctor's form.
California is set to do a partial reopening this Friday. Bay Area counties allowed some outdoor businesses like construction to resume on Monday but we expect the Bay Area to continue with the rest of shelter in place ordinances in place until the end of May. Some counties, including popular weekend wine country destinations like Sonoma and Napa who have not been hard hit with caseloads, are already starting to reopen on Friday. They will start allowing retailers to do curbside sales which should increase weekend demand for our service.
Startup Camp: getting Upshift in front of 2,600 angel investors
Startup Camp is an angel investment platform with 2,600 angel investors on it who have invested over $400,000 since this January. They curate investment deals for their platform and get companies in front of a large group of angels at no cost to us. They selected Upshift to be the deal they want to promote next week! Their founder will interview one of our cofounders on a 30 minute Facebook live event in front of their investment community, who can also ask questions in a live Q&A session.
Please remember to reconfirm your investment by 11:59pm PT today!
When we extended our campaign last week, we needed to file an amended Form C with the SEC. Existing investors will need to recommit their investments by the end of TODAY 11:59pm US west coast (pacific) time or it will be cancelled. If reconfirmation is necessary for you, you would have received an email from Republic asking for you to confirm your investment. Please note that clicking the link in the email, clicking on the link in the Republic banner, or just going to https://republic.co/portfolio/upshift and clicking on the “confirm investment” button is the only accepted form of reconfirmation.
If you have already confirmed, thank you! If you did not receive an email, do not see a banner on the top of your screen asking you to confirm your investment, or if you click on the above link and do not see a button that says "confirm investment" then don’t worry, you do not need to reconfirm.
If you have any questions about whether or not you need to reconfirm, please reach out to investors@republic.co.