A startup with founders who moved from North Carolina to Austin last year will get its chance to swim with the sharks this Friday, Oct. 14.
Storage Scholars LLC, founded in 2017 when CEO Sam Chason and Chief Operating Officer Matt Gronberg were freshmen at Wake Forest University, says now might be the perfect time for its "Shark Tank" debut as the company continues its national expansion, with plans to double its reach by next summer.
Chason said that preparing for "Shark Tank" was like preparing for a championship game: he and Gronberg watched game film (previous "Shark Tank" episodes); practiced their routes and plays (the numbers and stories for their pitches); and worked out every day (cut out distractions, slept well, ate healthy). They wanted to show up and leave it all on the field.
Storage Scholars aims to simplify college move-ins and move-outs through its pickup and delivery storage service, which served 23 campuses this past academic year. By summer 2023, Chason expects to service 50 schools, more than doubling its customer base. Storage Scholars has brought in $2 million in sales so far this year, Chason said. Chason added that Storage Scholars served more than 3,500 customers this past year and had an average feedback rating of 4.8 out of five stars.
While Chason couldn't reveal whether any of the sharks invested in Storage Scholars, he said that this will be an opportunity to get eyeballs on the company and provide it with more legitimacy.
Many entrepreneurs who go on "Shark Tank" — whether or not they receive an investment — see an uptick in website traffic, sales and interest in their startups after their episode airs. Chason hopes that will be the case for Storage Scholars, especially with student applicants who want to run branches of the company on their campuses.
He likened a startup being on "Shark Tank" to a business executive having an MBA from Harvard, noting that the process to get on the show is in-depth.
"It’s a lifelong childhood dream [of mine]," said Chason, who was honored by Triad Business Journa twice last year, once as an inaugural Inno Under 25 awardee and then as a 20 in their 20s recipient.
His goal is for Storage Scholars to become more national in its coverage area, as the company is grounded in the East Coast, down into the South through Texas. Chason hopes to break into more cities as well — Boston, New York, Nashville and Los Angeles to name a few. Chason said Storage Scholars has two additional partnerships in its pipeline, but declined to disclose more information before the deals close.
Chason said he also wants to continue expanding across different types of schools, so that Storage Scholars can service students at large state universities, small liberal arts colleges and everywhere in between.
In the past year, Storage Scholars has gone from two to seven full-time employees. The company also employs several part-time employees and more than 400 part-time college students.
As of now, Chason is solely focusing on Storage Scholars and its growth, having dissolved Moving Scholars, a residential moving business he launched in April 2021. Gronberg said the startup's founders decided to move to Austin about a year ago to be part of a larger tech community.
"We kind of came with the vision of connecting with like a lot of young entrepreneurial spirit," he said.
Gronberg and Chason are both living in Austin, often working at WeWork spaces downtown and near Barton Springs. However, the company remains based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Chason said the founders created Storage Scholars to pay for college, and it has been bootstrapped ever since.
"At the time, we needed it to be cash flow positive from day one to be able to put some of that toward our educational expenses," he said. "And so the way we did it is we collected $50 deposits upfront from our customers. And that was kind of like a downpayment toward our services. And then we would bill the rest 30 days after we picked everything up and put it in storage. And with that initial $50, we were able to kind of take that to buy the supplies in bulk and rent the first month of storage, and that's still the model used to this day."
Gronberg said his startup plans to have a private viewing party with fellow startup founders at Home Run Dugout in Round Rock. A second party is planned back in Winston-Salem where other team members are based.
This story has been updated to clarify that Storage Scholars LLC remains based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, according to corporate filings, while its founders have moved to Austin.
