You have 3 days left to invest in Upshift. Are you in?
There are now just 3 days left in Upshift's campaign on Republic. We've raised over $635,000 from over 2,800 people just like you. As of last Friday, Upshift had the MOST investors of any campaign on the Republic platform. We even have 2x as many investors as the other campaigns with the largest number of investors on this chart! That is truly amazing.
Our new ad campaign: "Don't buy this car."
In 1959, VW created a famous "Think Small" ad for the Beetle to convince Americans to rethink the need to own a big car. In 2011 on Black Friday, Patagonia took out a full page ad in the NY Times with the headline "Don't buy this jacket" to convince people to reduce, repair, reuse or recycle their clothes. We even found a great user generated ad for a Tesla that reads "Yesterday you wanted a Ferrari" convincing people that an electric car can be better than a luxury gas car. These ads all went up against well established cultural norms and assumptions like "bigger is better," "more is more," or "EVs can't compete with gas cars." Similarly, we all know that Americans are wedded to car ownership. Sometimes prospective investors think it would be just "too hard" to convince people to ditch their cars and subscribe to one instead. Or they just ask about costs savings, not fully understanding our value proposition of convenience. We are now launching a new "Don't buy this car." ad campaign. Our goal is to convince people to subscribe to Upshift rather than to buy a car by highlighting all of the things people willfully ignore that suck about owning a car and showing how your life - and our planet and cities - could be better by joining Upshift.
This campaign will go out over Facebook and Instagram, using a service called Agility to pinpoint geo-target our core demo living in 10 high cost condo towers in the SoMa area of San Francisco where expensive parking ($300+/month) is not included in rent. We will segment it into a series of 6 topics highlighting the pain of car ownership, the joy of the Upshift solution, and how cities and the planet will benefit as a result.
Don’t park this car (sleep in on street sweeping day and spend less on Upshift than a garage)
Don’t clean this car (don't spend Saturday at the carwash- we sanitize and clean using all natural, waterless cleaning products)
Don’t insure this car (full coverage insurance included and we'll handle claims)
Don’t buy this car (never talk to a car dealer ever again, no haggling or scams - transparent, usage-based monthly subscriptions)
Don’t maintain this car (we'll take it in every 5,000 miles for service and replace wipers, tires, oil, etc.)
Don’t fix this car (24/7 roadside, we'll take it in to fix and swap out a new car within 1 hour so you are back on the road)
So for instance, we can run an ad on Instagram targeting 30 something, college educated professionals who are considering leasing a car that live in a specific building with an Instagram ad that looks like the one above, but says "Don't park this car." and then we'll put a short tagline below like this:
"It’s the "return from vacation investigation" that really stings. Did someone smash my window? Is one tire missing? Wait, where is my car?! Maybe it was stolen! Nope, it was towed. For what? Why, it was parked in a construction zone of course. Suddenly you find yourself wishing it actually was stolen. A vehicle that’s been impounded for 4 days will cost $729 to retrieve. Maybe $350 a month for a garage spot isn’t too bad of a deal after all. That's $4,200 a year just to park your car. Just push that vacation back another year.
With Upshift, never worry about parking again. Just tap a button and your car arrives. When you’re done, lock it and leave. Best part? Worry-free vacations every year."
And if you haven't see it, check out our evergreen 3 part series from 2015 that unpacks our vision for Upshift: everything that you love about owning a car with none of the stuff that sucks, connected to a mix of alternatives to car ownership in a single unified Mobility-as-a-Service subscription.
Cars = Freedumb: why cars aren't so liberating
Cars = Freedom: why people love cars
Car(e) Freedom = a manifesto for the future of mobility
How could you turn your $600 stimulus check into $7.8M: invest it.
Did you get a $600 stimulus check from the IRS but don't need it for meeting your basic needs? Invest it to stimulate the economy and potentially get a return on your investment. If you had invested $600 in Uber in 2009, it would be worth $7.8M! Now you have the chance to invest in the future of car ownership at the ground floor. The future of transportation in cities is mobility payments instead of car payments. Rather than paying $774/month to own a car, you'll have a single mobility payment that integrates transit with shared bikes, rides, scooters and cars. We expect that a fractional car subscription will be about half of what people will pay every month- and around 4x what they pay for rideshare.
How you can support our campaign in these final days
Want to help get the word out? Promote our campaign on social media! Share a post on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and/or Facebook about our campaign. Write a sentence or two about why you invested, add a link to our campaign page (www.republic.co/upshift) and suggest that people invest before the Friday Jan 22 deadline. Here's a link to a Tweet you can like and retweet or you can modify the content and post it yourself on your preferred social media platform:
If you invested $100 in @uber a decade ago, it would be worth $1.3M today. Now’s your chance to invest as little as $100 in the future of car ownership. Click here to see why 2,800+ have already invested $635,000+ on @joinrepublic Round closes Fri Jan, 22. www.republic.co/upshift
You can also help us by downloading and liking our iOS and Android apps. You won't be able to use them without a paid membership plan, but it still will help us to get boosted up on the App and Play stores. If all 5,000+ people reading this email now downloaded and wrote a 5 star review within the next 24 hours, it could shoot us up as a trending app! Plus it costs nothing and just takes a minute.
We have now raised over $635,000. That's amazing. Thank you so much for your support for those of you who have already invested. In the final days, let's go all in.
Here's what it will take to max out our campaign to the full $1M:
If everyone who is following our campaign but hasn't invested yet invests $173
OR
If everyone who has already invested in our campaign increases their investment by $153
That's it. And everyone reading this just got around 4x that much money from the IRS in a stimulus check with likely more stimulus on the way soon. So what are you waiting for? There's just 3 days left and that $153 or $173 could turn into thousands or even millions of dollars for you while addressing climate change and improving the quality of life in cities!
If you haven't invested yet, invest $173 (or more!) in Upshift by the end of January 22nd at www.republic.co/upshift
If you have already invested (thank you!), increase your investment by $153 (or more!) at www.republic.co/portfolio/upshift This link will also work if you need to recommit your investment (eg, if your investment was cancelled earlier for any reason).
Remember, if you invest $1,000 or more, we'll send you a one of a kind "Upshift Car Shareholder" organic T-shirt and we have just 2 left!
Stay safe and be well. Let's do this!