Why I Created AssetJay

Before AssetJay, I ran a smart home platform company. We built software that connected IoT devices (sensors, gateways, smart plugs, wall sockets) and at our peak we were about 25 people. We had a lot of hardware. Not just the usual laptops and screens, but hundreds of IoT devices across various stages of deployment. And we had essentially no idea what we owned.

The problem with not tracking anything

When I think back to it now, it's remarkable how little we knew about our own equipment. We didn't know who had which laptop, what type it was, how many screens someone was using, or what peripherals they had. On the office equipment side, this was messy but survivable. The real cost was on the IoT hardware.

We would order duplicates of devices we already had, simply because nobody could tell you what was in stock. Sensors and gateways would be lying around the office, and there was no way to know whether a device was actively deployed for a customer, being used for testing, or just sitting in a drawer after someone labelled it once and forgot about it. Over time, that waste added up quietly.

We also ended up with three to five laptops sitting in a cupboard at any given time. It was easier to buy a new one for a new hire than to determine whether we had a usable spare. Of course, we did. We just couldn't prove it.

Spreadsheets work until they don't

I did try a spreadsheet at one point. It was too much work. Specifically, it was too much boring work. The kind where you know you should do it, but there were always fifty more pressing things to deal with instead.

I have a friend who runs a company of a similar size and tracks everything in a meticulously maintained Google Sheet. Multiple tabs, detailed columns, every device logged. It works, and it works because maintaining it is something he genuinely enjoys. But even his system has a weakness: when he's away for a stretch, things that get bought don't end up in the list. The spreadsheet is only as reliable as the person behind it.

This is the fundamental issue with using spreadsheets for equipment tracking. They work exactly as long as one specific person keeps caring. The moment that person is busy, on leave, or just having a rough month, the data goes stale. And once people stop trusting the data, they stop updating it, which makes it less trustworthy. It's a cycle that only goes one direction.

The things you didn't notice losing

When people left the company, we got the laptops and screens back. The big items are hard to miss. But chargers, mice, keyboards, peripherals. That stuff almost certainly walked out the door a few times without anyone noticing. We didn't have a record of what each person had been given, so there was nothing to check against. You can't recover what you can't prove was yours.

Solving a real problem

After that company, I wanted to build software again, but I was deliberate about what to build. I wasn't looking to start another venture-scale company. I wanted to solve a specific, well-defined problem as a solo builder.

At first, I did what a lot of people in the solopreneur space do: I looked at the problems I was currently facing. This turns out to be a trap. If you're a solo founder looking for problems to solve, you end up building tools for other solo founders. Products that make marketing a bit easier, or scrape social media for leads, or help you find your next idea. The solopreneur ecosystem is largely focused on solving distribution, because distribution is the hardest problem solopreneurs have.

I wanted to solve a problem that people have when they're actually running a company. Not building one, but running one. The kind of operational problem that starts small, gets worse quietly, and only becomes visible when something goes wrong: a laptop breaks and nobody can find the receipt, or someone leaves and you realise you don't know what they had.

Equipment tracking was exactly that problem for me. Every company from a handful of employees upwards struggles with it to some degree. Most don't have a good solution, because the existing tools are built for IT departments with dedicated staff and enterprise budgets. The market is full of powerful platforms that a 25-person company will never need and can't justify paying for.

What AssetJay is

AssetJay is equipment management for companies that don't have an IT department. The person doing the tracking is usually a founder, an office manager, or someone in ops who got handed the responsibility because nobody else wanted it.

The idea is straightforward: log your equipment quickly, attach the receipts, know who has what, and get reminded before warranties expire. Adding an asset takes about 30 seconds. You can forward a purchase receipt by email and it gets parsed automatically. When someone leaves, you see everything assigned to them in one place.

I'm building it for the kind of team I used to run. Small enough that nobody's job title includes the word “IT”, but big enough that a spreadsheet stopped working several hires ago.