About Greylock
Greylock Partners invests in entrepreneurs that focus on consumer and enterprise software companies.
- Menlo Park, California, United States
- 101-250
- Venture Capital
- Early Stage Venture, Late Stage Venture, Private Equity, Seed, Venture
- www.greylock.com
About Trove
Trove is a storage service that allows its customers to schedule pickups and deliveries online.
- San Francisco, California, United States
- Private
- www.mytrove.com/
Our Investment in Trove
It All Begins With The Founders
There are lots of criteria involved with making an early stage investment decision — the founders, the idea, the timing, the founder/product fit, the investor/investment fit, the deal structure, etc.
It can feel complicated and overwhelming, but it can be simplified. I have learned it all starts with the founders, and the earlier the stage, the more this is true. The story of Trove begins with Mike Pao and Jon Perlow.
I met Mike a couple of years ago while he was at Uber. Every big start up success has a few key early employees that are principals of that success.
Mike is one of those stars for Uber. He launched Boston, one of Uber’s first cities outside of SF, then wrote the playbook to launch other cities and became Boston’s GM.
He also led the intersection of product and growth during the hyper growth years. And yes, he helped pioneer surge pricing. As much as people complain about it (I definitely have) there is a brilliance to the idea.
It’s an elegant way to make supply and demand meet at peak times by increasing driver supply while tapping down consumer demand.
Mike and I spent time talking about business ideas over the past couple of years. We share a love of marketplaces and networks and a belief that there are many local commerce opportunities that need to be unlocked.
When the time was right for Mike, he joined as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence where he began to incubate a company.
Mike wanted to leverage his expertise around marketplaces and local logistics for a new startup. Over the course of a year, we kicked around lots of ideas and business models. The end result was Mike founding .
There was only one thing missing — a technical co-founder. A co-founder as talented and accomplished as Mike. That’s a high bar.
Mike met with hundreds of people to find the right fit, and ultimately partnered with someone he already knew — Jon Perlow. Jon co-founded Beluga, a messaging startup acquired by Facebook that became the foundation of Facebook Messenger.
At Facebook, Jon became one of the top 10 engineers at the company. Not top 10%. Top 10. Jon was the equally talented technical co-founder Mike needed.
They are both special entrepreneurs. Each of them could have anchored their own startup. But together, Mike and Jon are the dream team. Even better, they are as thoughtful as they are talented.
I would have backed Mike and Jon in anything they wanted to build.
You Should Own Your Stuff Instead of Your Stuff Owning You
Facebook Messenger and Uber saw real pain points (mobile communications and reliable transport, respectively) and successfully created a tech product to solve those problems at scale.
With Trove, Mike and Jon have the perfect blend of operations and technical experience to tackle the pain of self storage.
Storage needs often pop up during stressful life changes: When people are moving in with a partner or roommate, having their first baby and making room for a nursery, having friends or family stay for an extended period of time and need a guest bedroom, starting a new job working at home so they need space for a home office, or actually just want to park their car in their own garage.
Trove eliminates the stress of finding a safe, affordable storage facility and handles the time-consuming packing, transport, and storage process.
They offer a top-quality, hassle-free full-service storage solution and treat every item as if it were their own.
Storage frees up space and improves quality of life. In a dense city such as San Francisco, space is a precious commodity, but the stress and aggravation associated with de-cluttering to reclaim space often deters people from taking the time to do it.
It’s a simple idea: You should own your stuff, instead of your stuff owning you.
Elastic Storage For Physical Goods.
It’s interesting to see how digital space has been effectively optimized, but physical space has not. There should be elastic storage for physical goods.
Hot storage in your house for everything you need daily — like your clothes and small kitchen appliances. Hot storage is your closet and cupboard.
Warm storage for things you need periodically or seasonally — like skis and golf clubs and winter coats. And cold storage for things that you don’t need regular or seasonal access — like tax records and spare tires and memorabilia.
Warm and cold storage should be a remote 2nd garage with ability to get items when needed.
Trove provides item pickup and retrieval to give customers access to their warm and cold storage belongings whenever they need them.
Trove uses technology to make every part of the storage process more efficient for the customer and mover. For example, the moving crews use Trove to photograph and inventory items so people can always stay on top of the items they have in storage.
Instead of waiting around wondering when movers will arrive, customers will receive real-time notifications and tracking of crews.
Taking “Self” Out of Self Storage.
As a VC, I look for big, broken markets that can be massively disrupted by technology.
Storage is a $30B market — there is 8 square feet of storage for every man, woman, and child in the country and 1 of 11 households currently use self-storage.
But the industry is extremely fragmented. There are 30,000 storage companies. And there is no real service of any kind. Self storage is a real estate business.
Literally. They are REITs. Not traditional operating companies. And definitely not tech companies. Just a storage bin with a padlock located off the highway.
Residents don’t want them by their neighborhoods. Neither do city officials. They are being pushed out of town. And nobody likes to visit their storage facility because they can be unsafe, sketchy and difficult to access.
The right answer for both the customer and the community is to relocate the storage facilities farther away from town, but let consumers have full service pick up and retrieval from the comfort of their home.
That makes it better for both the customer and company. And it’s possible if you change the industry from a real estate business to not just an operating business, but to a technology marketplace.
And that’s Trove’s vision. To leverage’s Mike logistics and marketplace expertise with Jon’s strong tech skills to build a storage company that benefits people and their communities.
Essentially taking the “self” out of “self storage”.
Moreover, they are partnering with professional movers to unlock excess capacity and create incremental revenue streams for those companies. For moving partners, Trove is a great way to grow their business.
Conclusion
I’m super excited about working with Mike and Jon as they build Trove.
It’s the dream for an investor to work with the most talented founders from the earliest days. I believe Mike and Jon are special and will build a special company. Read about their thoughts .
You can read the rest of “Why we invested in” collection here:
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