Niche Biz: SpareFoot Storeage

NicheGeek:

Chuck Gordon, then an art student at UCLA, balked at the thousands of dollars he would have to pay to store his belongings while spending a semester in Singapore two years ago. He ended up stowing his stuff in friends’ homes and garages. Gordon thought plenty of people with extra space would rent it out if they could easily connect with renters.

That was the original plan behind the Web site he launched with his college roommate Mario Feghali in December 2008, now called SpareFoot. When they found that storage companies were listing their vacant units alongside individuals with extra closet space, they refocused the site on driving customers directly to professional storage firms. That was around the same time SpareFoot moved from Los Angeles to Austin to take part in the Capital Factory startup incubator, a 10-week mentoring program that yielded $20,000 in seed funding, as much in in-kind business services, and connections to investors. SpareFoot raised the first part of a Series A round expected to total about $1 million in September.

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