The fun loving startup, SpareFoot that has created the nation’s largest online storage marketplace, has just raised $10 million in venture capital from Insight Venture Partners.
Austin-based SpareFoot has raised $26 million since its founding in 2008. New York-based Insight Venture Partners provided $22 million of those funds. Its other major investors include Capital Factory, Floodgate and Silverton Partners.
“SpareFoot will use this latest investment to double down on engineering and product development,” Chuck Gordon, co-founder and CEO, said in a news release. “We believe there is a big opportunity to expand our offerings in the market, and that’s what we’re going to do. Our goal is to make renting a storage unit easier than booking a hotel room, and this new investment will help us make that happen.”
SpareFoot has 120 employees at its downtown headquarters and plans to add more than 40 this year in the customer service, engineering and product development areas, according to the news release.
“SpareFoot has done a great job of bringing together a highly fragmented market of small self-storage operators and is doing an even better job helping them compete with the large players,” Richard Wells, managing director of Insight Venture Partners said in a news release.
SpareFoot operates a free marketplace that lets customers find and reserve storage units online. It has the largest inventory of storage units in the U.S. with more than 7,000 facilities in its network.