In this interview, Nick Huber recounts his journey from a small-town upbringing in Tell City, Indiana, to building and exiting a $2 million‑a‑year storage startup while attending Cornell. He describes his early exposure to business, the decision to launch Storage Squad—a pickup‑and‑delivery storage service for college students— and the scrappy, offline marketing tactics that fueled rapid growth across 12 states and 25 colleges. Huber emphasizes his preference for “boring” traditional businesses over the media‑driven tech startup narrative, highlighting his mindset of making money quickly (e.g., $50 / hour) and his willingness to work hard. He details concrete growth levers: handwritten ads printed thousands of times, sidewalk chalk, flyers slipped under dorm doors, and hiring students for door‑to‑door promotion. He also mentions financing the first box truck with student loans, operating a 70,000 sq ft warehouse, and eventually selling the company for a modest seven‑figure exit in early 2021. Post‑exit, Huber holds controlling interest in somewhere.com and runs Bolt Storage, a self‑storage venture. Throughout, he frames his story as an opportunistic, disciplined approach to entrepreneurship that values tangible, cash‑generating businesses.
Chapters
I was a country kid from southern Indiana, a little town called Tell City. I got put on a lawnmower when I was 13 years old to take over some commercial properties. Learned real quick that business is very hard, but the first paycheck came and I was, I was addicted ever since. Went to college at Cornell, ran track and field, met my wife, started a company called Storage Squad, which does pickup and delivery storage for students. We grew that into 12 states, 25 major colleges. It was a hard business, man. Box trucks driving around towns picking up boxes. We got up to a little over $2 million a year of revenue at our peak. We sold the business for a modest 7-figure exit in late 2020. Actually, very first couple weeks of 2021, we closed on that deal. So, yeah, man. Now, I'm doing several other things. I own controlling interest in somewhere.com. Bolt Storage is our, is our self-storage business that we've kind of built that first building. We can talk about that a little bit if you want to. But yeah, man, I think I'm just an opportunist. I love, I love boring old-fashioned businesses, and I think people get the wrong idea on entrepreneurship all the time. So again, that's where I come from.
Have you always had that perspective though of these, these type of businesses? They're phenomenal businesses, and most people who are wealthy in the US especially have these businesses. Have you just always had that perspective? Did you ever get tempted by like Tech world back in the day. Like, tell me more about that.
So luckily, I stumbled upon entrepreneurship from an angle where I wasn't addicted to studying and reading about entrepreneurship. If I think, I think if I would have gotten sucked into the media version of entrepreneurship, you know, the big idea: raise money, go to California. If I would have gotten sucked into that, I don't even know if I would have gotten excited about Storage Squad in the early days because it wasn't scalable. It was hard. I was sweating. But 3 weeks after starting Storage Squad, we had $3,000 cash sitting on the bed of our dorm room. So, you know, we were just energized and excited about that.
Which is more than many startups will ever get to in revenue, which is, which is pretty wild to think about what you've done with that. I want to dive into that story a little bit more because I know there's a lot to that, obviously. Just take me through your mindset at the time when you have even like your, your track and field like teammates back in the day being like, yeah, I don't think this is going to work. Like, what, where was your mind at that point in time? You always have this kind of like, Not fuck you attitude, but almost like, I'm just gonna do it anyways. Like, take me through that in the early days.
I think I got the difference. I don't know, I compare it to, I just got a puppy, right? And a ball rolls down a hallway and a puppy wants nothing more than to go get that ball. An old dog is laying on the couch and a ball rolls through the living room and, you know, might get up and might sniff it, but definitely not gonna like jump up and attack it, right? I just had that energy and drive to go make money, man. I got excited about the fact, like, get off my couch, make $50 an hour for my time. I got excited by that. Most people scoff at it, especially if they think about, you know, billion-dollar startups. So I don't know, man, I just got excited and got after it a little bit.
Let's talk about growing that business. How'd you get your first customers? Because there's some scrappy ways you went about this.
You want me to share my screen here? I got— I pulled up— I can pull up a picture for you. Basically, Let me see if I can find it. This is my marketing plan, my entire marketing plan that took us to $2 million a year of revenue.
Yes.
This is my wife. This was back when she was my girlfriend. This is Boston. This is on the streets. I mean, we were doing storage for students. We knew where these students walked. We knew where they lived. We knew where they went to class. So, I wrote an ad. If you're just listening, need storage? StorageSquad.com, $29.99 per box all summer. I personally wrote this ad myself over 5,000 times. Oh my God. And look, like, there's an 8:40 class in the morning in Ithaca. That's me on the left. I bought a box truck. Um, on the right, that's a cargo van, $1,500. We used student loan money to buy this. This is the one that my college track athletes made fun of. when we were in that locker room. But man, we stored a lot of boxes, dude. This is a warehouse, 70,000 square feet, filled it up with boxes. So yeah, we got scrappy, man. We did the things that did not scale, sidewalk chalk being one of them.
What were some of the growth levers from that? 'Cause obviously that worked tremendously well to get you to even like a couple million revenue. Anything else as you got bigger and bigger that you ever expanded to more schools, same strategy or different playbook at the time?
We, flyers under doors. We knew where they lived, we knew what rooms they were in. Like, I would hire students to go in their dorms and slide a flyer under every single door in a dorm. We didn't run Google Ads or Snap— actually, our first paid ad was actually on Snapchat in 2017, but we were already over $2 million of revenue. Wow.
