Life At UpKeep - Max Gong, coordinador de proyectos

Life at UpKeep!

"Life at UpKeep" is an employee spotlight blog series, where we showcase the amazing people and teams in our company doing amazing work together!

Through the eyes of our very own UpKeepers, you’ll get a glimpse into our company culture, our team’s big and small wins, how members of our team came to join and love UpKeep, and so much more! 

Meet Our Teammate!

We are excited to chat with Max Gong, our Project Coordinator! Max started his journey at UpKeep only 4 months ago and has already made a huge impact on the company. Max goes above and beyond to ask meaningful questions to drive value and makes it his duty to get the job done efficiently and thoroughly. Not only does he lend a helping hand to every department at UpKeep, but he finds opportunities for growth and strives for success. We are so glad to have someone like Max here on the team! Here is his interview with our CEO, Ryan!

Ryan: What's up, Max! Could you start us off by sharing what your role is at UpKeep, and some of your responsibilities?

Max: Hey Ryan! I’m a Strategic Initiatives Project Coordinator, I work directly under you, Ryan. If I were to sum up my role in one sentence, it would be -- whichever new initiative we want to explore, I’m there to help execute it. 

To put it into more details, I would categorize what I do in two ways:

1. I work very closely with partnerships & integrations -- I reach out to companies we can partner with, I list them on our marketplace, and I build proof-of-concept integrations. Essentially, I want to make sure our partnerships offer something meaningful to our customers. 

2. If there’s a certain product feature that we’re interested in launching, I sometimes do the initial research. This includes interviewing customers, researching competitors, doing some market research, creating some lo-fi designs in Figma, drafting product requirements. Essentially, I provide a starting point on how we should tackle a product feature.

Ryan: How did you find out about UpKeep? And, what made you want to join the team? 

Max: I actually found out about UpKeep more than a year ago. My best friend John works at UpKeep, and he invited me to the UpKeep office. I remember meeting you Ryan, Caitlyn, Joe, Miji, Heather, and a bunch of others.

And what made me want to join the team? There are so many reasons why I wanted to join UpKeep. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would be: UpKeep, and especially this Strategic Initiatives team I’m in, is just a great opportunity for me to mesh my engineering experience with my curiosity about how to run a company. 

For context, I studied electrical engineering for 5 years and I’ve done a number of internships. And even though I love engineering, I really want to learn what it takes to handle a company -- “What are the business operations you need? What type of culture do you need to foster? What are the business metrics you should look at?” 

I think being in this role at this company with the Strategic Initiatives team -- it couldn’t have been more fitting. And I’m super grateful for that.

Ryan: Currently, what’s a project you’ve been working on that you’re really proud of? Or, maybe a project you’ve already completed that you still think about?

Max: I think one thing I’m really proud of is the whole process of creating our integration ecosystem. And the reason why is because I want to see our customers be able to feel like, they can integrate ANYTHING with UpKeep. I want them to be able to streamline their workflow between UpKeep and whatever software they use. And I feel like this integration ecosystem I’m building is going to do just that -- it enables our customers to do more. 

Ryan: What’s something you love about UpKeep?

Max: I really love the culture. It’s super fun, it’s super open, and when it comes down to business, we get things done with hype. I’m a super passionate person myself, I engross myself in whatever I do, and I just love how UpKeep reflects that passion, that hype. 

Ryan: Awesome, thanks again, Max, for joining me in this episode of Life at UpKeep! 

Join us!

To learn more about our current openings, visit www.onupkeep.com/careers!