The New York startup finding storage in the spaces cities already forgot - basements, garages and vacant retail turned into rentals you can walk to.
Above: The Stuf brand mark. Founded during the 2020 pandemic by CEO Katharine Lau, Stuf is an asset-light take on a $48 billion industry - it stores your things without building a single warehouse.
In the spring of 2020, Katharine Lau was doing what a lot of city dwellers were doing while the world sat still - cleaning out her apartment. She had spent her entire career in commercial real estate, working as an investor, developer, operator, tenant and brand-builder, and she had toured more buildings than she could count. What she needed that spring was mundane: somewhere safe and easy to reach to put her belongings, close to home. What she found was a gap.
Self-storage, a roughly $48 billion industry in the United States, had been built for the car. The typical unit sits inside a fluorescent-lit facility off a highway, a drive away from the dense neighborhoods where most people actually live. For a New Yorker without a car, "self-storage" often meant a valet service or a long trip. Lau, who had a habit of noticing the quirky, funky spaces in buildings that never seemed to lease, saw a simpler answer sitting in plain sight: the empty rooms cities already had.
That observation became Stuf. Rather than build storage facilities, Stuf partners with the owners of commercial and multifamily buildings to convert their underused space - basements, garages, mechanical floors, hard-to-lease retail - into clean, tech-enabled storage for the people and businesses nearby. The landlord earns money from square footage that was sitting idle. The renter gets storage within walking distance. Stuf handles everything in between.
Figures reflect publicly reported milestones through 2024. Location counts are approximate and growing; Stuf has said it aimed for roughly 40 locations by the end of 2024.
Remotely managed, app-accessible storage units carved out of underused space inside city buildings. Clean, well-lit and hospitality-inspired - a deliberate rethink of a product that had barely changed in decades.
Stuf signs revenue-share agreements with property owners, then designs, builds, markets and operates the storage. Dead square footage becomes recurring income - without the landlord lifting a finger.
Small businesses in dense markets use Stuf for inventory, equipment and archives close to where they operate, avoiding long hauls to suburban facilities.
Renters get storage they can actually reach on foot. Cities facing empty offices and vacant retail get a productive use for space that markets have stopped absorbing.
Stuf pitches storage as a neighborhood amenity rather than an errand. Its locations are designed to feel closer to a well-run building lobby than a warehouse aisle. Photo: Stuf Storage.
The traditional self-storage giants - Public Storage, Extra Space, CubeSmart - own and build. On-demand players like the former Clutter and MakeSpace picked up your things and stored them elsewhere. Stuf sits in a different place entirely: it neither owns real estate nor moves your boxes for you. It converts existing space and runs it remotely, which is what lets a very small team operate a surprisingly large footprint.
Illustrative positioning based on Stuf's publicly described model - relative, not measured. Stuf deliberately targets the hardest, densest markets, where entry is tough and copycats are slow.
CEO and co-founder. A career-long commercial real estate professional who has stood on every side of a building deal - investor, developer, operator, tenant. That range is the reason Stuf's pitch lands with landlords and renters alike.
Lau has been named to Inc. magazine's Female Founders 100 and recognized in Connect CRE's 2024 Next Gen Awards. Under her leadership, Stuf earned a spot on Fast Company's list of the World's Most Innovative Companies in 2022.
Total disclosed funding: approximately $12.8M. Stuf has framed its capital as fuel for expansion into new and existing dense urban markets rather than for buying real estate.
A pandemic spring cleaning reveals a gap in convenient urban storage - and a company is born.
Harlem Capital Partners and Wilshire Lane Partners back the model early.
Fast Company names Stuf a World's Most Innovative Company; Inc. lists Lau among its Female Founders 100.
Altos Ventures and Allegion Ventures lead a round to accelerate expansion.
New sites in NYC and Brooklyn; a presence across roughly eight US markets, with storage pitched as a fix for office and retail oversupply.
Stuf operates in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, San Diego, Seattle and Washington, D.C. These are the markets where parking is scarce, apartments are small and driving to a highway facility is a genuine chore - which is exactly where neighborhood storage is worth the most.
It started with a mop. The company traces directly to Lau's own 2020 spring cleaning, when she couldn't find safe, convenient storage near home.
Three people, thirty-plus sites. Stuf's remote-operations model lets a core team of three run its entire location network.
@storemystuf. The brand's plainspoken social handles say the quiet part out loud.
Hard markets first. Stuf chose the densest, toughest cities on purpose - friction that keeps competitors out.
Stuf converts underused commercial and multifamily space - basements, garages, vacant retail - into tech-enabled, remotely managed self-storage located close to where people live and work.
Stuf was founded in 2020 by CEO and co-founder Katharine Lau, a longtime commercial real estate professional based in New York.
Instead of building or owning large facilities on city outskirts, Stuf repurposes existing space inside urban buildings, runs locations remotely with software, and shares revenue with landlords.
Stuf operates in dense US markets including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, San Diego, Seattle and Washington, D.C., with roughly 30-40 locations as of 2024.
Stuf has raised about $12.8M total, including a $1.8M seed round in 2020 and an $11M Series A in February 2023 led by Altos Ventures and Allegion Ventures.