Storage Scholars
Year founded: 2017
No. of employees: 10 full-time, 500+ part-time
Top executives: Sam Chason, co-founder and CEO; Matt Gronberg, co-founder and chief operating officer
Address: 500 W. 5th St., Suite 400, Winston-Salem 27101
Website: https://www.storagescholars.com/
Instagram: @storagescholars
TikTok: @storagescholars
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/storage-scholars/
What’s the best thing that could happen to a young startup?
If you said making a deal with a billionaire entrepreneur like Mark Cuban on ‘Shark Tank,’ Storage Scholars founders and Wake Forest alumni Sam Chason and Matt Gronberg would agree with you.
Storage Scholars – the Winston-Salem moving and storage service for college students – appeared on ‘Shark Tank’ in October and received offers from four of the Sharks. Chason and Gronberg took Cuban’s deal of a $250,000 investment for 10% stake in the business. Cuban, who has been outspoken about reducing college debt, also told Storage Scholars he would help open doors for the company on more campuses.
That deal – which Gronberg said is about to officially close – has been paying off for Storage Scholars.
“Last year, from about September to January, we probably gave six or seven introductory calls to colleges,” Gronberg said. “In the last four weeks, we’ve given 60.”
In under six years, Storage Scholars has grown to service 23 campuses and served over 3,500 this academic year. The company also brought in $2 million in revenue by October 2022.
Gronberg told TBJ that Storage Scholars will be expanding to over 50 college campuses from coast-to-coast in 2023. Their goal is actually to triple, on multiple fronts, as they outline below.
With their operations more than doubling, Storage Scholars has been hiring aggressively. Four new full-time employees start this month, with two devoted to technology and two devoted to campus operations, Chason said.
Storage Scholars also has been hiring college students as movers and campus ambassadors at the same aggressive rate and is still looking to hire more.
“To bring some cachet, we’re a Mark Cuban-, Shark-Tank-backed company. We have the opportunity to ideally target a different demographic of people who want some more legitimate résumé building experience,” Chason said. “And even with the exposure [from ‘Shark Tank’] we’re hiring so many.”
Storage Scholars also closed an important partnership in October with StarRez, the leading global provider of housing automation software that is used by universities across the U.S. Gronberg said that Storage Scholars is currently working with StarRez to build out technology integration and there is no current timeline for when it will be implemented.
The partnership will allow StarRez to include an option for students to sign up with Storage Scholars when they select their room for the next academic year.
“It’s an opportunity to get in with the university and reach the students directly,” Chason explained.
Chason added that this partnership will also allow Storage Scholars to eventually target incoming freshman, a difficult target demographic for the company.
While Storage Scholars has a lot of growth on the horizon thanks to its new partnerships and ‘Shark Tank’ deal, Gronberg and Chason are still focusing on keeping their company at its best.
“A lot of companies lose sight of the product and get caught up in the promotion,” Gronberg said. “At our core, we are all product people. We spend most of our day fixing technical, operational and hiring issues and making sure we have a perfect team at every campus in order to give the really great experience we promised.”
Storage Scholars
Q&A with Sam Chason and Matt Gronberg
What is your goal for next year?
MG: To triple, that’s my goal. Triple campuses, triple top line, triple employees, triple growth and triple partnerships. We’ve more than doubled every year until now, and I think with this injection of press and cash and with the knowledge and excitement of our team, we can triple in size.
SC: The goal is do all that while maintaining the quality. What’s cool is what we’ve seen over the past four years is our internal reviews have gone from 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, to 4.8. In the moving industry, that’s unheard of. We’re still confident with our product.
Do you plan to keep the headquarters in Winston-Salem?
MG: Yes, we will. We just hired a new person in North Carolina. They’re in Raleigh but will be coming to the Winston office for in-person visits, so we’re still building there.
How are you each handling the tremendous growth of Storage Scholars?
SC: Every new success and new growth sees a different level of challenges. The moment we finished the ‘Shark Tank’ pitch, we were focusing on how to prepare for the airing. Once it aired, we were focusing on how to prepare for an influx of new orders. Once your bar raises overall and there’s no longer a shock factor, everything requires a tremendous amount of work and there’s not instant gratification. It’s just one step at a time, one step at a time.
MG: Since the ‘Shark Tank’ airing, it’s been the most demanding “off-season.” But we don’t look at it as an off-season – it’s really our go-time because we need to build for the following year, fix, promote and form new partnerships. We look at the experience as being beyond blessed. We’re so excited every date. I feel like there’s new life being pumped into me. These demanding, 14–15-hour days are not unfun and I’m not unhappy. One of my favorite quotes is "your work works more on you than you work on it."
