Hello, I tried emailing you @ hn@openunit.com and got about bounce back from google. That address isn't setup for outside addresses. Regards
Thank you.
Launch HN: OpenUnit (YC W20) – Software for managing self-storage facilities
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: Launch HN: OpenUnit (YC W20) – Software for managing self-storage facilities
#22Platform 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?
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…
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)
Re: Launch HN: OpenUnit (YC W20) – Software for managing self-storage facilities
#23I 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.
Re: Launch HN: OpenUnit (YC W20) – Software for managing self-storage facilities
#24Nice 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
Re: Launch HN: OpenUnit (YC W20) – Software for managing self-storage facilities
#25It 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/ URL Categories: Parked Domain Reputation: Unverified
Re: Launch HN: OpenUnit (YC W20) – Software for managing self-storage facilities
#26It 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/ URL Categories: Parked Domain Reputation: Unverified
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.
Re: Launch HN: OpenUnit (YC W20) – Software for managing self-storage facilities
#27I 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 .
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 c…
congrats on the domain Taylor! Way to go man.
Re: Launch HN: OpenUnit (YC W20) – Software for managing self-storage facilities
#28I 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.
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...
[2]: http://www.austintek.com/gnucash/ncsa-gnucash-talk.html
[3]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/100tGcA4blh6KSXPRGCZpUlyx...
[4]: https://medium.com/@RobertKhou/double-entry-accounting-in-a-...
Re: Launch HN: OpenUnit (YC W20) – Software for managing self-storage facilities
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s our man Taylor. We’ll be building out the rest of our design team in the near future.
Agreed, looks terrific. I found one small spelling error - "Digital recipets" - when I was looking through the page.
We now offer "Digital receipts" (I just pushed up the fix)! Thank you for catching that.
Re: Launch HN: OpenUnit (YC W20) – Software for managing self-storage facilities
#30I 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 .
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 c…
this is hands down the most interesting thing i've read today