‘Going for it:’ upBed founder goes all-in

One of the tough decisions most entrepreneurs eventually face is when to go all-in on their idea. If they have full-time jobs and families to support and take the leap too early, they risk running out of runway before their startup can gain traction. If they wait too long to commit to their side hustle, maybe their startup’s prospects have decreased because they weren’t giving it enough attention and missed the window. Lots of factors are in play.

For Aron Semle, co-founder of a new startup called upByte Inc., the decision came down to customers—once he had his first one, he decided he needed to give them his full attention. He couldn’t be working at his employer’s desk and be fielding calls from the customer and troubleshooting things over the phone, which had begun to happen.

“It was proof that we had a solution,” Semle said. “I’d get a call that ‘something was wrong,’ and telling them I could stop by after work didn’t feel right. They are our first customer! We need to support them 100%.”

This week, Semle left his full-time job as director of solutions management at PTC (formerly Kepware Technologies, which PTC acquired in 2016) to work full time on upByte.

The “solution” is upByte’s first product—upBed, a wearable device for the healthcare industry that can send silent alarms to caregivers of patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia when a patient wearing one wakes up and gets out of bed. Semle’s first customer is Scarborough Terrace, an assisted living facility in Scarborough.

The application is developed atop existing “smart” sock technology produced by Redmond, Wash.-based Sensoria.

The leap to working on upBed full time has been a long time coming. Semle and his two brothers first created the product in 2015 for an Internet-of-Things-focused hackathon. They used Sensoria’s socks, originally designed for runners to help them analyze their footfalls, to develop an application that collected data from the socks to help manufacturing and plant workers who are on their feet all day to track their foot health. After winning that hackathon, they began speaking with Sensoria about other applications, which is where the focus on a healthcare app came in. The trio, working with Sensoria, unveiled upBed in 2016 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. (Interesting aside: This article about the Semle brothers launching upBed at CES was the first article posted on the Maine Startups Insider website.)

“It’s been ups and downs [since then], but we’ve been refining the design and working with trial sites getting feedback,” Semle said.

Semle, who lives with his family in Buxton, almost left his job a year ago to launch the company, but in retrospect is glad he waited to make the leap.

“We were not ready to make the jump,” he said.

Given Maine’s aging demographic, Semle said the state is a perfect spot to incubate the upBed product and build upByte, which could eventually move into other products.

“Maine has a large elderly population, and we’re ahead of much of the nation in this regard. That’s been a huge advantage for us,” he said. “Most facilities are happy to help us with trials and providing feedback. We’ve received a lot of great local support. I think Portland is primed for startups, and we’re excited to be a part of it.”

To date, Semle and two new co-founders (his brothers are no longer involved in the project, but he has two new co-founders who still work full-time jobs and so didn’t want to give their names) have bootstrapped the company, other than some funds for winning the initial hackathon and a $5,000 grant from the Maine Technology Institute.

The next goal is to reach 50 “happy” customers, Semle said. Now that he’s focused full time on the company, he plans to begin a concerted local sales effort throughout Maine and New England. After reaching 50 customers, he expects it would be time to raise some money, hire a sales and marketing staff, and begin to scale the business.

While Semle is focused on the immediate goal of reaching 50 customers, he does have ambitious long-term goals. Asked where he sees the company in 10 years, he said:

“We want to grow the company to $1 billion here in Portland, with considerable employee ownership. I know that’s a lofty goal, but there is tons of opportunity in the healthcare space, and the underlying technology of upBed is a foundation to solve a lot of pressing problems in long-term care,” he said. “Going full time we’ll learn about these problems at a much faster rate.”

Semle said that eventually he’d like to see dozens of startups in Portland spun off from upByte employees after a successful exit.

“I really feel this is going to happen, and we want to be the ones to do it,” he said.

Asked if he had any advice for entrepreneurs who may be wondering how to know when to make the leap, he said: “Set a goal (mine was one customer), plan out your exit from your day job, and trust your gut. No regrets. Also, don’t do it alone! I’ve had lots of ‘failed’ solo side projects over the years, and finding the right partners makes a huge difference.”