by johnerik | 2025-04-02 20:59:13+00:00
Hi HN! We built a MacBook Upgrade Program inspired by Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program, so you can finance a new MacBook (with AppleCare+) over 36 months—and upgrade after 24 months if you want the latest model. It’s live at getupgraded.com (US only for now).

I’m @johnerik the cofounder/ceo and I’ve been running upgrade programs for other retailers in Scandinavia for the last 8 years. Now we’re building our own! I just moved (back) to Austin.

## Why?

- Because we’ve wanted a MacBook Upgrade Program since Apple launched the iPhone Upgrade Program, in 2015! (I personally have been on the iPhone program since it launched. I’ll admit that I have skipped some years and not upgraded, but have been loyal to the program.)

- Because the whole process of buying a MacBook in cash and selling on Facebook Marketplace when you’re ready to upgrade is a hassle. (I would end up with devices laying around because I disliked the selling part so much.)

- Because if we can get this flywheel started – where we get devices back frequently, repair them when needed and then quickly find them a new home – I think we can increase the useful life of a given device, and therefore reduce the total number of devices that need to be produced overall.

- Because as a team we have a ton of experience doing this. Since 2016 we’ve been running upgrade programs for retailers and brands (including Apple and Microsoft) in Scandinavia.

- Because we think there’s an opportunity to build the next great American electronics retailer. New MacBooks are just the start. Used and refurbished devices are the future.

## How does this work?

- The program divides the total cost of a new MacBook and AppleCare+ into 36 monthly payments.

- After making 24 monthly payments (two-thirds of the total), you're eligible to upgrade your MacBook.

- To upgrade, you’d just choose your new MacBook, and we'll ship it to you right away.

- We'll temporarily pause all payments for 30 days while you have both the old and new MacBook.

- You'll transfer your data from the old MacBook to the new one, then send the old one back to us using the provided prepaid return box. (We’re considering including a Thunderbolt cable to make migration super fast – love to hear if you think this would be useful.)

- After we verify your old MacBook is in good working condition (normal wear and tear is acceptable and expected), we'll pay off the remaining 12 payments (the final one-third) for you.

- You'll then start fresh with a new set of 36 monthly payments on your upgraded MacBook.

If you don’t want to upgrade, no prob. Just make all 36 payments (pay off all the principal) and you’re done.

## How do the economics for this come together?

Our main partners are

1. Gatortec, an Apple Authorized Reseller, 2. Citizen Bank, also the lender for Apple’s iUp Program, and 3. A bulk buyer for the used devices.

- Gatortec has a direct line to purchase Apple devices/services below MSRP and they share the majority of the margin with us.

- Citizens gives our 740+ credit customers 0% interest and 640-739 customers a variable rate between 29.99 and 12.99%. In exchange, we give them half our margin. And keep the rest as our upfront take rate.

- Our bulk buyer has guaranteed to buy the used MacBooks for 37% of MSRP. We are buying them from customers for ~33% of MSRP (it’s actually slightly higher on loans with interest because of how amortization works, but I’ll skip that here). So we theoretically will make that spread. Though our actual plan is to refurb these devices ourselves, resell them again on our marketplace, and give as much cash back to customers as possible – keeping just enough to cover our expenses.

In summary: We make a little bit from the purchase itself, and a little bit more from the upgrade. The goal is loyal customers, and therefore a higher lifetime value.

## What’s our tech stack?

- Ruby on Rails backend, because it’s what we knew at founding and we wanted to move fast.

- No fancy JS framework or SPA. Just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (leveraging Rails tooling).

- Heroku hosting, because it Just Works.

- Some AWS (Lambda, API Gateway, DNS, CDN, S3, ...) because Heroku doesn't always Just Work (especially with things that need to scale).

- SaaS tools like Sentry, Algolia, Posthog, Mailgun, …

- Tons of great open source libraries (and we contribute where we can, especially with bugs or features). Again, try not to build stuff.

- We've settled on Windsurf as our AI-driven IDE, but Cursor is also great. The space is moving so fast so we might be using something else next month (but we try not to switch too often).

- We have a large, multi-regional, internationalized codebase with 10-years of history, so we're constantly refactoring, cleaning, pruning, updating (linters, tests... this part is still not easy to hand off to AI, but maybe soon!).

- A Wordpress marketing site (:vomit:... not fun to work with or maintain) because someone said it's the best for SEO, but we’ll likely rebuild and host in Framer soon.

- We maintain our retailers' Shopify store, and we can yarn dev the store, but it's clunky to have so many moving parts that don't run on our Macs (airplane mode FTW).

## Where we are going

- We want to create a new kind of online electronics retailer. One that has A+ customer support, sells both new and used devices, serves both consumers and businesses, and has various ways to buy and sell.

- Long term, we want to be a one stop shop for managing all your devices. Families are like small businesses now, both have 20 devices! We’d want to build an app where you can track all your devices, see when certain ones are due for an upgrade, compare prices, and more. Love any feedback here.

- I’ll also just say that for me personally, I know we are selling brand new MacBooks right now and that’s super high-end, but for now we’re just starting with the most expensive device and we will work our way down. This whole idea of taking care of devices, fixing them, and using them again is very much the vibe I grew up with. My dad is a mechanic so we were way more likely to repair something than we were to buy something new.

## Finally, I’d love your feedback/questions on anything above, or here are specific questions:

- User experience/design: How clear is our flow? Is the site layout friendly and accessible? What questions are not answered? We know it’s super Apple-like.

- Features: Any must-have features you’d expect from a retailer/upgrade program?

- Financing vs leasing vs subscriptions: The underlying financial instrument today is a term loan, but we kind of squeezing something that’s similar to a lease or a subscription into a loan.

- B2B: We’ve tested leasing to a few friends' companies? Would you want this for your company?

- Leanings from other countries: We’re currently US-only—is there anything cool in your country/locale that we could learn from?

- Feel free to test our customer support chat.

- Future product categories: Which devices or brands should we consider adding next?

- Circular Economy: Would you want to know your COe savings are? Or is that just greenwashing at this point.

THANK YOU!