Is This the Worst Tech Idea of 2014?

75.10K

Sam Biddle

05/02/14 12:55PM

Filed to: bubbleicious

If you can't birth a genuinely good idea, there's a mounting body of evidence saying you should try the most deliberately stupid idea possible. How about a storage unit company that's calling itself a technology startup?

The convergence of practical joke and multi-million dollar company continues apace: TechCrunch calls New York-based MakeSpace "the Dropbox for physical storage."Dropbox is of course a tech company that uses physical storage as a metaphor for the digital storage it sells. "Dropbox for boxes" is commonly known as "just some fucking regular boxes, you charlatans." But, with a straight face, MakeSpace repeatedly describes itself as a "cloud" company:

We're creating the best way to store your physical stuff in the cloud. We believe storage should be convenient, seamless, and always available on-demand where ever you are.
[...]
MakeSpace Air is your closet in the cloud via mail. You tell us how many boxes you'll need to store, we'll email you shipping labels, and then you send them our way. Now you can "upload" your physical things to the cloud from anywhere in the United States. (APO/FPO locations coming Spring 2014)

In this case, however, the "cloud" you're "uploading" your "old shoes and dusty Dreamcast" is actually not a cloud hosting setup, but a" warehouse...located just a few miles outside of Manhattan." TechCrunch is in on the gag:

Users pay $25/month to get four bins worth of storage. But the key here is that users have on-demand delivery and drop-off of all those items, not unlike a download or upload to a cloud storage service.

Makes sense. Why, just this morning, I uploaded some water into my mouth via cup in my apartment. So, really, this is a storage unit business that's received over $10 million in venture capital backing. I know that $10 million is essentially bee piss in a world where WhatsApp goes for $19 billion, but the idea of "ten million dollars" really need to start meaning something again. Until then: yes, yes, a million times yes—we are in a bubble.

To contact the author of this post, write to biddle@gawker.com

11

Joel Johnson Sam Biddle 05/03/14 08:25AM

This is a great example of when your skepticism could easily be flipped. Let's look at what MakeSpace is doing that is different than traditional storage companies.

* A better web interface, presumably. (And most storage places have...none?)
* The ability to have things delivered instead of being required to fetch them
* A standardized packing/boxing system
* A tweak to the storage paradigm that makes it more about individual items than bulk storage

Now I grant that all of these things should be relatively easy for a large storage company to implement. But they haven't so far. Essentially, this is a modern way to smooth out some kinks in the UX for storage, and while $10 million isn't nothing, it's a relatively small amount for a company that will involve physical delivery and storage.

You may not like their cloud analogy, but that's just marketing. Seems pretty strong to call them charlatans.

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Sam Biddle Joel Johnson 05/03/14 03:22PM

It's not just marketing. They've duped VCs out of $10 million by calling a very slight improvement on a very old business a "cloud company." They've duped the tech press into taking that BS analogy seriously. They've gotten attention and money they don't deserve by this whole fatuous analogy. It's obnoxious and it's wasteful. It's a misallocation of time and money.

But even if you put aside the analogy and look at the idea itself, this is what we're considering laudable these days? Who is this aimed for other than the same ultra-niche of people who want instant gratification?

Why does a storage space need a web interface? Why store something if you're going to need it back so quickly?

How are carboard boxes not already a "standardized packing/boxing system"?

Why does the "paradigm" of putting shit you don't need anymore in a warehouse need to be "tweaked"?

If this is what we consider innovation then I think that's very sad for everyone. We should be trying harder than "Take X thing that ain't broke and try to fix it by making it webby."

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Joel Johnson Sam Biddle 05/03/14 03:59PM

I doubt they've "duped" any VCs. (Although I find your concern for VCs' wellbeing touching.)

I'm not sure what an ultra-niche of people is; perhaps you mean "niche." And as niches go, "people who want to store things" seems like a pretty large one here in New York, let alone the greater U.S.

Nevertheless, what's wrong with instant—or at least more instanter—gratification? Why do you use Seamless so religiously? Because you like its interface, the one that consolidated and improved your fast-food delivery experience. Why do you personally still use Uber, when you think the company's overall strategy is troubling? Because sometimes you're happy to pay a little more for instant gratification.

Moreover, I believe that for many—myself included—the barriers to off-site stuff storage (the need to transport it yourself, forgetting what you stored without a rigorous self-indexing routine, the pain of getting something back from storage) have prevented our own gratification, instant or otherwise. It's too big of a pain in the ass to consider. When I saw the service and price of MakeSpace, I immediately thought about what I might use it for. I've never done that every time I ride by the Moishe's that's literally three blocks away from my apartment.

Cardboard boxes are a terrible long-term storage system, especially if someone else is handling your stuff. They are temporary storage, not long-term storage. That argument is a non-starter.

"Take X thing that ain't broke and try to fix it by making it webby" is the M.O. of pretty much every tech company from Amazon or eBay on. You'll have to do better than that. I don't believe you're actually that satisfied with the status quo.

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Sam Biddle Joel Johnson 05/03/14 05:55PM

Maybe you're just impressed by this and I'm not. It's a nicer storage unit. I think most people will be fine storing their shit the old fashioned way, and those who aren't could probably just throw must of the stuff away anyhow.

But beyond the merit of the idea, MakeSpace represents this really noxious nexus of dumb money and credulous culture. I refuse to consider $10 million a trivial amount of money. I refuse to believe that VCs have run out of genuinely cool ideas, and that this is the next most deserving. I refuse to believe that our economy is best served by smart people working on $300/year software to put a pair of shoes in a plastic bin outside Manhattan. If being an "innovator" is as easy as tacking buzzwords onto old ideas, then we are all suckers.

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Joel Johnson Sam Biddle 05/03/14 07:59PM

But surely you recognize there are doing something innovative, right?

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DickFromage Sam Biddle 05/02/14 01:03PM

It has 1/100th the convenience of your mom's garage, or your crawslpace, or your condo locker for Infinite% the price!

Is anyone else totally empathizing with the League of Shadows right about now?

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coolteen DickFromage 05/02/14 01:11PM

Cant wait for a tech company to come along and disrupt trash collection. Sick of dragging my trash to the curb. Wish I had an app to arrange a trash upload to the cloud for only $45 a month plus surge charging and a $5 anti-fraud protection fee.

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Sam Biddle coolteen 05/02/14 01:17PM

Access your trash from anywhere!

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Dave J. Sam Biddle 05/02/14 01:11PM

I have to say, as someone who owns a tiny-as-hell house built in 1903 (when apparently people didn't own "things" that required closets or any kind of storage), that I don't hate this. There are many times I've said to my wife "I wish we had some sort of way that we could store this stuff, but that we wouldn't have to drive to a self-storage place where 89% of the people around us are using the site to make meth, and that also wouldn't take up space in our house." So this isn't the worst thing ever.

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Sam Biddle Dave J. 05/02/14 01:16PM

You don't need to hate it. It might very well be a good and useful service. But it shouldn't be considered "special," nor should it receive $10 million in venture cash. It's a storage company. There are many other storage companies. There is nothing worthy about this.

Dave J. Sam Biddle 05/02/14 01:39PM

Totally with you on that one.

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cheerful_exgirlfriend Sam Biddle 05/02/14 01:12PM

I run a small business that is based on this model but we cut out all the shipping and warehousing middlemen. IT's a simple two-step process.

1. Gather your items for storage

2. Deposit them in our convenient container