Preston S. Alder and Joseph Woodbury never planned on being entrepreneurs; the opportunity fell into their laps when they saw a need and decided to fill it. Together the two Brigham Young University alumni are disrupting the $38billion storage industry with their business, Neighbor.
Alder, a 2017 strategy graduate from Mesa, Arizona, came up with the idea for Neighbor when leaving for a summer internship in Peru. He couldn’t afford traditional storage options, so he and his wife drove their belongings from Provo to a friend’s home hours away in northern Utah.
“As I was driving,” Alder says, “I thought to myself, ‘Why can’t I be using a garage in Provo? There is available space in my community. How can I tap into that resource?’”
The self-described Airbnb of storage, Neighbor connects renters in need of storage space with members of the local community who have an empty closet, bedroom, or garage. Homeowners turn their unused space into revenue, while renters receive a safe place to store their belongings for an affordable price.
Woodbury, who graduated from BYU with a BS in economics in 2017, joined the Neighbor team while in a class for his strategy minor. The native of Boulder City, Nevada, teamed up with Alder and his business partner Colton Gardner, a 2016 University of Utah grad, to work on the project during the semester, and he has stuck around ever since. Woodbury now serves as the company’s CEO.
“When I first told Joseph about the idea, he was excited,” Alder says. “We loved working together in the strategy program and had a mutual respect. We would have been dumb to let this opportunity pass us by.”
The team members entered their business idea into the Miller New Venture Competition Challenge, hosted by the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. As a competition finalist, Neighbor was awarded $15,000. Participation in the competition also gave the students access to a wide network of BYU Marriott alumni who have become successful entrepreneurs.
Neighbor’s founders credit their BYU Marriott connections for helping get their business off the ground. Alumni and professors provided advice for the young entrepreneurs and were some of Neighbor’s first customers, eager to help students who were looking for storage space.
“We had great professor-mentors who took us under their wings,” Alder says. “I felt that our professors were invested in our future and not so much in the grade. I am grateful for professors who were able to see the vision that we had.”
The vision is catching as Neighbor grows. Neighbor has been featured by top-tier publications, such as Business Insider and TechCrunch, and has multiple billboards along Utah’s I-15 freeway. The year-old company now has ten employees and recently received $2.5million in venture capital funding from local seed funds, which Alder and Woodbury plan to use to improve their technology and expand into new states.
“We’re honored to bring on some of the state’s biggest investors,” Woodbury says. “This is a no-brainer product where people can monetize their unused space. The seed money will help us build awareness.
“We didn’t pick an easy project,” Woodbury continues. “We both gave up our jobs for this, but it’s been an awesome experience. Neighbor is changing the world and putting money into people’s pockets.”
