Carlos Macias poses in a garage on his property Wednesday, April 21, 2021. Macias uses an App called Neighbor that helps match people who need storage with people who have storage space.
Friday, April 23, 2021 | 2 a.m.
Growing up in Boulder City, Joseph Woodbury figured he would probably become an attorney, like many in his family.
After graduating from Boulder City High School in 2011, and following a two-year church mission, a classmate at Brigham Young University posed a question that would change the course of Woodbury’s life.
“My friend was running a business and needed to go work out of the country for a few months,” Woodbury said. “He needed to get a storage unit for some items. He found that he had to drive 30 minutes to the next town over just to find an open storage unit.”
Instead, Woodbury’s friend, Preston Alder, found a friend in his neighborhood who was willing to offer some temporary storage space.
So was born the idea for Neighbor, a sharing economy storage marketplace that connects those looking to store items — anything from boxes of random belongings to a lawn mower or vehicle — with others in a particular area willing to rent space. Firearms, drugs, explosives, hazardous materials or pesticides are prohibited items.
Just like ride share services like Uber and Lyft, Neighbor connects people through an app.
Founded in 2017, Neighbor, which has about 50 employees, is being used in all 50 U.S. states.
“When (Preston) told me about it, I thought it was just about the best idea I’d ever heard,” Woodbury said. “We started on it and here we are.”
The service oversees a month-to-month rental agreement between the two parties.
A person can rent out any area — including garage space, a spare room, a basement, a lot on a property or an outbuilding — with rates based on several factors, including geographic area and size and scope of items being stored. For instance, a rented 25-by-45-foot garage space in Las Vegas would cost about $400 per month.
For the contract to be finalized, the two parties would agree on times when the renter can access their belongings. Neighbor makes money by taking a percentage of the fee every month.
Through Neighbor, the renter has up to $25,000 worth of insurance in case anything happens to their items. All hosts are covered up to $1 million, Woodbury said.
Carlos Macias, a Las Vegas landscaper, owns a large city lot with multiple outbuildings and available space. He’s storing two cars for two different renters, and is storing furniture for another small-business owner in one of his garages.
He’s planning to rent out more areas and figures that he’ll be able to use his Neighbor earnings to make his entire monthly mortgage payment. He’s already earning about $1,000 a month.
“I was a skeptic at first,” Macias said. “After I posted my ad on Neighbor, people called me after about a week of it being up. I’ve already turned people down. One person wanted to park an RV and another had semis, which I just didn’t want to do.”
Neighbor is showing no signs of letting down. Earlier this year, it announced it had raised $53 million in a “series B” round of fundraising, a stage that generally comes after initial “seed” rounds of fundraising for a startup.
So far, in just the few years of its existence, Neighbor has raised over $60 million from investors.
Neighbor is actively disrupting the U.S. storage industry, which rakes in close to $40 billion in revenues annually, according to market research firm IBISWorld.
Woodbury said there was plenty of room for the industry to grow.
“In the U.S., there’s more storage facilities than there are McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Home Depots, Costcos and Walmart combined,” Woodbury said. “You could literally fit every man, woman and child in America in the storage units we’ve built, and they’re over 90% full, that’s the crazy thing.”
An environmentally conscious person, Woodbury said it simply made more sense that Americans use the space they already have, instead of building more “dusty concrete storage units.”
He said he also was proud that the marketplace offers a way to get neighbors in cities and towns to interact with each other, a feeling that perhaps comes from Woodbury’s roots in a small town.
The company has already turned heads in the tech world. DoorDash CEO Tony Xu became an investor this year while former Uber CEO Ryan Graves was already on board.
“I never would have imagined, as a kid from Boulder City High School who maybe would have wanted to go be an attorney, that I would have raised $65 million for a startup,” Woodbury said. “That wasn’t on my radar. When we started the company, we started competing in some business competitions, and some investors saw us and reached out. It’s been a lot of fun.”
While he wasn’t expecting to become a well-known tech business disruptor, Woodbury’s family has been used to being in the public eye.
Joseph’s grandfather, Bruce Woodbury, is the former Clark County commissioner and namesake of the 50-mile beltway in Las Vegas.
His father, Rod Woodbury, is a former mayor of Boulder City.
Today, Joseph Woodbury lives in Utah with his wife — high school sweetheart and fellow 2011 Boulder City High School grad Chloe Woodbury — and four children.
“I like to tell people that I have five startups,” Joseph said. “Neighbor is definitely a big commitment. It’s made me gain a greater appreciation for people who start businesses, just the amount of work you put into it. But it’s very fulfilling. We’ve really grown a lot.”
