Seattle-based Storrage spent the past couple years figuring out its business model and experimenting with new service offerings. Now, with some fresh cash, a new name and an all-star roster of investors, the company says it’s finally ready for a national rollout.
It’s a big day for the young company, which was founded by the well known entrepreneur behind HomeGrocer.com. Portland is the first city to get the service outside of the company’s hometown, but it plans to pretty quickly expand into 40 metropolitan cities after that.
But the business is going to look a whole lot different by the time it gets there.
For starters, it changed its name from Storrage to Livible to reflect the fact that it no longer just serves as an alternative to traditional self storage.
Sure, if you want to box up what you don’t use and have it stored somewhere else, Livable will do that. But, more interestingly, if you want to sell things on Craigslist, loan it to a friend or donate it — Livable will handle that, too.
Livable CEO Terry Drayton said he has a simple mission: “Just make it easy.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time Drayton has launched a startup with that goal. Grocery delivery company HomeGrocer.com enjoyed a $264 million IPO in 2000, and was one of the most prominent Seattle-based Internet companies of the dot-com era with its peach-colored delivery trucks zooming throughout the city.
HomeGrocer.com eventually sold to Webvan and fell on hard times during the dot-com bust, but Drayton said he learned back then how customers will latch on to a service that simply takes the logistics out of everyday life.
Livible started with “valet storage” in 2013. It was different from traditional self storage because users paid per box, per month. They didn’t have to rent an entire locker, and Livable would pickup and drop off their boxes whenever customers wanted.
The service still works basically the same way, but users now have more choices for what happens with their boxes once Livible carries them off.
For instance, if you have a kayak in storage you want to loan to a friend, Livible will drop it off there and pick it back up. If you want to sell something, you just tell Livible what price you’re looking for and the startup will post it to Craigslist, handle the exchange and collect the money for you. Livible will also help you rent, donate or even trade items you’re keeping in storage.
The idea is to do whatever it takes to help users get unused items out of their houses.
Drayton said he thought all along people may be interested in having Livible serve as an intermediary to sell things, but the other use cases have been a total surprise.
“All the rest customers just kept asking for,” he said. “That’s the best way to add services. Customers are always a whole lot smarter than you are.”
Along with the expansion, Livible announced today it has raised $1.2 million from prominent angel investors, including Geoff Entress and Amazon Senior Vice President Jeff Wilke. The company has now raised a total of $2.5 million from big names like Amazon’s former CIO Rick Dalzell, former Coinstar CEO Dan Gerrity, former Microsoft CFO Peter Klein and Nordstrom Co-president Erik Nordstrom.
