Chuck Gordon’s education in empty space

Chuck Gordon had a furniture problem before he had a company. He was studying at UCLA and preparing to leave for Singapore. His belongings needed somewhere to stay. Conventional storage cost enough to provoke a parental objection: why pay more to keep the furniture than the furniture was worth? It was an awkward question for a student, and a useful one for a future founder.

Gordon found room among people he knew. His friend Mario Feghali could offer space in his mother’s attic. Other belongings went into spare corners elsewhere. From the tenant’s perspective, this was an improvised moving arrangement. From the prospective businessman’s perspective, it suggested inventory: all those rooms and garages sitting partly empty, waiting for somebody with too many things.

The company that followed would spend years changing its answer to the storage question. Gordon would move from ceramics to comparison shopping, from calling facility owners to running a software business, and eventually from the chief executive’s chair to the board. Along the way, the friend who helped with his possessions would become his business partner and his brother-in-law. The furniture had chosen its custodians well.

First, make something people will buy

Gordon grew up in Washington, D.C., then headed west for college. At UCLA, he studied art, specializing in ceramic sculpture. His early commercial experience involved making serving dishes and selling them. There is something pleasingly practical about this beginning: before selling a service that would help people put things away, he was making things they might want to keep.

Entrepreneurship classes in Singapore gave that interest another direction. The storage inconvenience became a business plan. In 2008, Gordon and Feghali launched the venture that became SpareFoot. Its early incarnation connected people who needed storage with people who had spare space in private homes. A garage could earn its owner money; someone else could avoid an expensive storage bill.

The proposition had an obvious appeal during a recession. It also had a considerable domestic complication. Your spare room might be available, but would you be available when a stranger wanted his bicycle back? A storage customer needs confidence about access and security. An inexpensive square foot is less useful when someone else controls the front door.

The customers who changed the plan

Professional storage operators began signing up for a website intended to offer an alternative to their facilities. That unexpected interest gave the founders a more promising direction. These businesses already had the buildings, locks and operating routines. What they needed was help finding tenants. The young company could bring those vacancies together and let customers compare them.

Hotel and airline comparison sites had already taught people how pleasant it could be to see options in one place. Storage shopping still involved a great deal of individual searching and calling. Gordon saw an opportunity to give an ordinary, infrequent purchase the convenience people expected when booking a trip. Nobody needed to become enthusiastic about storage. They needed to finish arranging it.

In 2009, the founders moved to Austin to join Capital Factory. The accelerator put them among experienced entrepreneurs and helped connect them with investors. For two recent students, this mattered beyond the money. They were entering a trade whose customers and customs they needed to understand. Experienced people could shorten the distance between an attractive proposal and a functioning business.

The telephone was part of the product

Gordon’s description of the early work is usefully free of magic. He was no trained salesman. Calling storage facilities and asking them to pay for referrals made him nervous. He did it repeatedly anyway, becoming more comfortable through practice. The comparison website required conversations with people who might reasonably wonder why they should trust a young stranger on the telephone.

The proposition became easier to explain when payment depended on a result. Facilities would pay when a referred customer moved in. That put a concrete outcome at the center of the discussion: filling an empty unit. A software pitch could sound abstract; an additional tenant was something an owner could recognize, count and decide whether to pay for.

Distribution required a similar willingness to ask. SpareFoot pursued partnerships with apartment websites whose visitors were already moving. Those partnerships could send prospective renters toward its listings. The partnerships also gave the team a reason to approach more facilities: a listing could reach customers beyond SpareFoot’s own audience. Each side of the business helped make the other more persuasive.

“I’ve never been shy about asking for what I want.”

Chuck Gordon, in an early interview

There is a useful distinction in that admission. Being willing to ask does not mean enjoying every sales call. Gordon could seek introductions and opportunities while still finding cold calls difficult. His early progress depended on doing uncomfortable work often enough to learn it. The website was the part customers saw; the repetitions behind it were harder to put in a screenshot.

A larger team, a very public haircut

By 2012, Gordon described a business with more than 50 employees, over 6,000 participating facilities and more than 50 partner websites. The art student and his roommate were building an organization. The work now included teaching storage operators about online marketing, improving search visibility and turning visitors into reservations. A niche could contain a surprisingly varied working day.

The founders also cultivated a conspicuously playful company. Gordon marked one business milestone by shaving off his much-discussed mop of hair. It was an inexpensive ceremony, with a result everyone could inspect immediately. For a company selling a practical service in a traditional industry, the joke made room for a personality beyond the booking form.

Growth brought a different management question. By June 2014, SpareFoot employed nearly 160 people and had raised $26 million in venture capital. Maintaining a startup culture had become a subject for Gordon’s public conversations. A company can keep the same name while the experience of working there changes substantially. Knowing everybody becomes harder as there are more people to know.

From finding tenants to running the place

In March 2018, SpareFoot announced an agreement to acquire SiteLink, which made management software for storage businesses. Cove Hill Partners would take a majority stake in both businesses, and Gordon would lead the combined company. SpareFoot’s marketplace then offered booking across more than 12,000 U.S. facilities. Gordon was taking responsibility for a business that reached further into an operator’s working day.

The combination, which also brought in storEDGE, became the basis for Storable. The brand launched in 2019. Its premise addressed a familiar frustration: different pieces of business software did not always cooperate. A facility could need tools for finding customers, taking payments, managing rentals and controlling access. Bringing those functions together made integration itself part of what the company sold.

Recognition arrived alongside the organizational changes. Gordon appeared on Forbes’ 2012 real estate 30 Under 30 list, and he and Feghali were recognized in the 2019 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year awards in Central Texas. The awards supply dates for a résumé. The more revealing continuity is the partnership behind them: the same two college friends, still working on successive versions of the business.

A friendship with unusually good storage

Gordon and Feghali’s connection survived well beyond a dorm assignment. They continued living together after college, eventually moving into separate homes in 2016. Feghali dated Erika, whose sister Jessica was introduced to Gordon. Both couples later married. A random pairing at UCLA had acquired an extended family.

Gordon’s interests outside the company retain some of the texture of his art-school beginning. He cooks elaborate meals and gardens. He has a Sussex spaniel named Napoleon. He enjoys travel, naming Bhutan as a favorite destination; in 2025, he said he had visited 56 countries. His working life concerns how people use space, while his leisure gives him several reasons to leave the office.

Making room for someone else to lead

Storable’s ambitions extended beyond self-storage. In May 2024, it acquired Newbook, adding property-management and booking software for RV parks and campgrounds to a business already serving marinas. Gordon described the move as its third vertical. The settings differed, but reservations, payments and occupancy presented recognizable operating problems. The company was applying experience from one kind of rented space to others.

Expansion did not remove the difficult parts of management. In November 2022, Gordon announced a reduction of approximately 6% in Storable’s corporate workforce, citing a changing economic environment and weaker storage demand, occupancy and pricing. The statement made visible the other side of leading a growing company: deciding how to reduce costs while continuing to invest in products and support.

On September 8, 2026, Storable announced Scott Chancellor as its next chief executive. Gordon would continue on the board and as an advisor. After 18 years building the business, he was changing his relationship to it again. The announcement described his intention to support Chancellor and introduce him across the industry. The founder’s next job included helping someone else take charge.

One of Gordon’s earliest pieces of advice was simple: “The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to fail quickly.” His career gives the phrase a patient counterpart. He changed the model, kept the partnership and stayed with the customers. The student who needed somewhere to leave his possessions spent the next chapter of his life finding more work in the same problem. An empty room turned out to have quite a lot in it.