Donald Boone had five months to turn his rental marketplace startup BoxedUp into a successful business.
That was the deadline he negotiated with his wife if he was going to quit his job leading customer development in Amazon’s business sector.
Less than a week after his last day at the e-commerce giant, Google wrote him a check for $100,000. Four months later, he raised $1 million from Atlanta investors Collab Capital and Outlander VC, and West Coast investors Slauson & Co., and Black Capital.
Now, Boone and his wife are moving their three kids across the country, from Seattle to Atlanta. He wants BoxedUp to be a part of Atlanta’s scrappy growth into a major innovation hub.
“Silicon Valley, California never felt like me,” Boone said. “Never felt like home. But when I go to Atlanta, I feel embraced.”
Boone’s story is a familiar one among Atlanta entrepreneurs. Atlanta seemingly has the best of both worlds — the quality of life that comes with a metro area full of diverse people and blanketed by trees, and a business ecosystem of startup resources and major corporate players.
“I couldn’t think of a better place to raise my kids and my company in the same location,” Boone said.
Boone is in the final stages of securing space for BoxedUp. He currently has three full-time employees and will hire more engineers and designers with his seed funding. He plans to set up shop in the West End, an area exploding with new development and gradually becoming one of the city’s innovation corridors.
The Southwest neighborhood shows early parallels with Georgia Tech’s Technology Square, an innovation district in the heart of Midtown attracting major corporate tech expansions.
At West End's core is the Atlanta University Center, the nation's largest consortium of historically Black colleges and universities. Those schools have seen a massive influx of investments that are providing much-needed fuel to technology and entrepreneurship programs. The Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurship, an incubator for Black-led startups and businesses, is within walking distance. Microsoft Corp.’s planned, 15,000-person campus will be about three miles north.
Boone plans to lease office and warehouse space to store BoxedUp rental equipment, which could include cameras, podcast gear and other equipment for creatives. The startup aggregated equipment from existing rental companies and allows people to list their own. One of Boone’s goals is to reduce e-commerce waste, giving people a convenient option to borrow tools and equipment rather than buy.
“Our broad vision is to be the Amazon for rentals,” Boone said.
