It’s finals week at Wake Forest in 2017. Freshman Sam Chason (‘20) just made another lap across campus, picking up cardboard boxes at residence halls and piling them into a rented box truck. His Resident Advisor had to sign the rental agreement for the truck, since he was too young at the time.
While most students crammed for final exams in ZSR, Chason and a few friends shuttled back and forth between the formerly named South Residence Hall and an off-campus storage unit chosen for the convenience of its first-month free deal. As a budding entrepreneur, Chason knew the opportunity was too good to pass up. He would repeat the process in the fall, bringing people’s boxes of belongings back from the storage unit to their new dorm rooms to start the year.
This was Storage Scholars, a Wake Forest student-founded moving and storage company, before it became a nationally recognized brand. CEO Sam Chason, who later brought on Matthew Gronberg (‘21) as co-founder, spent their college careers building their storage service from the ground up, delivering a simpler move-in and move-out process for students across the country.
What began as a way to help pay for his four years at Wake Forest quickly grew into Chason’s full-time side hustle. He went knocking door-to-door with flyers in hand, pitching what was then called “Wake Storage” to prospective clients. By the end of the spring semester, he was running a full-fledged operation that brought in $18,000 in its first year.
Today, Storage Scholars is projected to do over $10 million in revenue this year, according to Chason, and operates at 200+ U.S. colleges and universities.
Students who want to use the service can create an account on the Storage Scholars website and register with their university. The user then creates an order, which involves choosing a storage plan, requesting a packing kit with cardboard boxes, packing tape and sticker labels and inputting a pick-up date/location as well as a delivery location for the following year.
Storage Scholars employs college students to take care of the rest as an initiative to create job opportunities on campus. These student movers bring clients’ belongings to a temperature-controlled storage facility for the summer and deliver everything to their new dorm rooms so the items are waiting for them in the fall.
The company has hit several milestones since its beginnings, operating out of a Hopkins Residence Hall (formerly South) dorm room. In fall 2022, Storage Scholars appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank: a reality TV show where entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to a panel of investors – and secured a $250,000 investment from billionaire Mark Cuban for 10% equity in the company. For Cuban, who paid his way through college with different side hustles, the founding story of Storage Scholars struck a familiar chord.
Chason says the experience reinforced one of the earliest lessons of his entrepreneurial journey: every big break often rests on a foundation of unseen work.
“I remember we were so excited after filming wrapped, ready to go out to dinner and celebrate and one of the producers hands us a drill and says, ‘Okay, now you have to go take down your set,’” Chason said, laughing. “So instead we ended up drilling, screwing and putting everything back into boxes. The moment was such a microcosm of the idea that no one’s going to do the work for you.”
Another milestone is the company’s evolution in its partnership with StarRez Student Housing Software, a platform that hosts housing portals for more than a thousand universities, including Wake Forest.
After piloting an early test phase at Wake Forest, StarRez announced a full rollout of Storage Scholars across its university network at the Global Connect conference this summer. Beginning in Spring 2026, Storage Scholars will be embedded into the Residence Life and Housing onboarding process at its partner universities. Students can register for the service during the process of making housing selections, choosing a meal plan or filling out occupancy forms. Chason expects the shift to be particularly helpful in reaching incoming freshmen.
Storage Scholars has technically had a partnership with StarRez for 3 years now, but the companies’ integration is entering a more visible phase.
“We view the services offered by Storage Scholars as an opportunity to enhance the move-in/move-out experience for students by alleviating the stress associated with moving,” Director of Operations at Residence Life and Housing Zach Blackmon said.
Storage Scholars has expanded its services in recent years, allowing students to ship items in advance through the Ship-To-School program or opt for a Direct-To-Room delivery with their belongings waiting upon arrival. The company has also evolved beyond its early identity as a student storage startup, operating year-round with commercial installation projects at K-12 schools, higher education institutions, office buildings and military bases.
“We did a move on the Alaskan Air Force base for a week over the summer,” Chason said. “If we can do that and also move out of middle and elementary schools, and then move furniture at Middlebury College in Vermont, then there is pretty unlimited opportunity for the business.”
As the company approaches its tenth year in business, Chason reflects on how scaling Storage Scholars cultivated his resilience as an entrepreneur.
“A lot of people imagine that running a business gets easier as you grow,” Chason said. “But in reality, the bigger you get, the more complex and harder the problems become. You just become more resilient and better at solving them.”
