Moving season is upon us, Boston, and if you're relocating your place of residence but haven't booked a mover or a truck... well, normally I'd impart upon you a Taken-like "good luck." But there's another solution available that could quell your moving woes.
"Moving is the second most stressful thing in a person’s life after divorce."
QuikForce was born out of the Harvard Innovation Lab in 2014 – where it's currently operating out of – but really it predates that year by about three decades. Founder Desmond Lim, who boasts a master's degree in public policy from Harvard, conceived of a platform to connect customers with well-curated movers in such a way that he likens it to "Kayak but for moving firms."
Lim's father, who was a mover for the past 35 years, was the inspiration for this budding company. Having been around the moving business for much of his childhood, Lim was poised for years to help innovate the industry.
We caught up with Lim to talk more about his company, its direction and one of his worst personal moving experiences – we've all been there.
Nick DeLuca: Describe how and why you conceived your startup
Desmond Lim: The first QuikForce was born in Singapore in 1980. For the past 35 years, my father, Simon Lim, worked as a van driver diligently, delivering furniture and goods for his customers. Simon only completed 4th grade and would wake up at 5 a.m. every morning seven days a week to work and to support his family of five. Growing up, I would help my father move furniture and goods, and always wondered how we could use technology to make moving simpler.
As the first in my family to attend college and come to America, I focused my graduate school at Harvard University and MIT on the intersection of computer science, business and public policy. At Harvard, I started to help some of my friends move in the summer of 2014, and went on to help more than 40 friends move. In Oct. 2014, QuikForce was born out of Harvard Innovation Lab, founded by me and my classmates at school, to make moving simple.
ND: Why do you think it took so long to start innovating the moving business?
DL: Moving is the second most stressful thing in a person’s life (after divorce), and more than 50 million Americans move on average every year. There are a couple of problems people face during moving, including locating a trusted mover, finding a mover that best serves their moving needs in terms of price and service, conveying information of the move to the mover, transparency in pricing and additional services including storage, packing or disassembly.
The average American moves 15 times in his or her lifetime. The $20 billion moving and storage industry in America has more than 10,000 companies in 18,000 locations. It is a fragmented business without a clear leader. The moving industry has traditionally been hard to innovate because of its fragmented nature, and because there are many established players in the industry who have been moving customers the same way for the past few decades. Current industry players are resistant to change, resulting in a lot of inefficiencies in the moving process.
ND: Where does your company stand now and what are the next steps?
DL: QuikForce provides on-demand professional moving services by connecting our customers to more than 50 trusted and reliable QuikForce moving partners, which are all fully insured and licensed. With a few clicks, QuikForce will collect all the information needed for the move, process it through our machine-learning algorithm, and connect you to a moving firm that will serve your moving needs, from loading to packing, storage to moving.
Every single move is unique, and we use a data-driven approach to analyze the variables involved in the move, from size and type of move, location, timing, stairs, heavy or bulky items, and other packing or disassembly help. Our team of computer scientists have analyzed more than 10,000 moves in Massachusetts to ensure that we match you with the best company based on our algorithm.
Led by a team from Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Wharton, Boston University and Northeastern University, QuikForce recently launched in the greater Boston area and has experienced more than 70 percent growth rate in orders per week, has a user base of more than 3,000 customers, and has formed partnerships with major local real estate companies.
We currently have more than 50 moving partners in Massachusetts, and after launching for just less than two months, we are already cash flow positive, and profitable. Our next step will be to grow into New York City, Detroit and Washington, DC.
ND: What are some challenges you've come across trying to launch it? Are you seeking venture funding or paying for it solo?
DL: To better learn about the moving process, every QuikForce employee has been required to join me and the moving partners on at least one move to better understand the entire moving process.
For the past year, I've bootstrapped the business on my own. Having paid my own way through college and grad school working part-time, I've used my personal savings of $10,000 to bootstrap the business, and have been able to maintain very low cash burn rate for the business. We are now looking to close a round of venture funding, and have been in advanced discussions with both venture capital firms and angel investors in Boston, New York, Detroit and Singapore. We are looking to close our seed round by the next one to two months.
ND: Describe an absolutely awful, or truly amazing, moving experience you've had.
DL: In the summer of 2014, I moved from Harvard Square into a MIT fraternity, Epsilon Theta, in Brookline, where I currently work as a graduate resident advisor. I called up and emailed more than 20 moving firms over three days, spending more than six hours on it, and received a wide array of price quotes. It was a frustrating and tiring process and it consumed me physically and mentally.
I finally found a moving firm I deemed to be credible, but it was difficult for me to tell the firm what I had to move. I ended up spending a long time talking on the phone with the moving firm to detail my move. On moving day, the company showed up late, and due to a miscommunication on the phone, the move took twice as long and the final bill came up significantly higher too.
