MakeSpace, a New York-based startup that's reinventing the self-storage industry, today announces a Series A funding round of $8 million, bringing their total funding to $10.1 million, led by Upfront Ventures, with new participation from Founders Fund and OATV, and all existing seed investors: Lowercase Capital, High Peaks Venture Partners, and Collaborative Fund.

MakeSpace makes it possible for anyone to quickly and easily store their physical belongings to the cloud, eliminating the well known inconveniences associated with traditional self-storage companies. With the new cash infusion, MakeSpace plans to introduce innovative products to further disrupt the antiquated self-storage model, while expanding their operations and maintaining their outstanding 5-star customer service rating.

How can MakeSpace simplify your life?
MakeSpace is centered around making urban life easier. MakeSpace's philosophy of simplification involves three easy steps that allow you to store your things, so that you never have to step foot in a storage unit again.
Schedule
1. Schedule a pickup online or by phone and a delivery driver brings high quality bins right to your door.
Pack
2. Pack your bins, gather your oversized items and a MakeSpace 'Uploader' comes back to pick it all up.
Cloud
3. MakeSpace takes your stuff to their storage facility and creates a visual catalog of what you stored so you can order it back within 48 hours for $29 (less than a roundtrip taxi) with just a few clicks.

'With the help of our investors, we're reinventing the entire concept of how city-dwellers dwell. There's a rising global trend of urbanization and micro-living, that is, more people are moving to cities and living in increasingly smaller spaces. Space constraints rank as one of the most stressful aspects of living in a city but it doesn't have to anymore. MakeSpace makes it as easy as clicking a button to store and retrieve things. Now, without ever having to leave the comfort of your home, you can quickly 'download' your skis for a last-minute ski trip, or 'upload' Christmas decorations to make room for beach towels and summer gear,' says MakeSpace CEO Sam Rosen.

How is MakeSpace Changing Self-Storage?
Self-storage is $24 billion a year industry with 1 in 10 American households renting a storage unit. MakeSpace has an opportunity to grow the market, as customers who previously would never have used self-storage are using MakeSpace as an extension of the home acting as a second or third closet. For millions of urban city residents, from people living in small shared apartments to massive penthouses, MakeSpace is a lifestyle extension rather than traditional self-storage which has been typically used in times of desperation: disaster, divorce, death, or downsizing.

'I view MakeSpace as reverse Amazon,' says Mark Suster, Upfront Ventures General Partner, who joins the MakeSpace board. 'Amazon blew up the distribution model of retail. It said, 'Do you really need to have expensive real estate near your house in order for you to get goods' and made it hard for local retailers to compete by having huge cost advantages. Because MakeSpace can store your stuff in a remote location, yet ship it to you at a moment's notice, we have huge scale advantages to the archaic physical storage infrastructure. It's a classic Innovator's Dilemma.'

Traditional self-storage companies are starting to take notice. In fact, the largest incumbent in the space, Public Storage, has publicly distanced itself from innovation by creating a commercial directly attacking MakeSpace's 'Closet in the Cloud' concept. 'It felt to me like a typewriter company running an ad talking about how computers were just a fad and might lose your information on a floppy disk,' said Suster. MakeSpace continues to innovate, for example, by adding a new Beta product, MakeSpace Air, allowing anyone to ship items to MakeSpace storage from anywhere in the United States -- perfect for those who are bi-coastal, in the military or between moves.

With the latest investment, MakeSpace will continue to rapidly expand their operational capacity in order to meet increasing demand and will focus on offering new services like an iPhone application, with plans for an early summer release. The company also plans to introduce another major city by the end of 2014.

Who is Behind Makespace?
Series A investors include Upfront Ventures' Mark Suster, who joins the board, Founders Fund (Facebook, Spotify, SpaceX, Lyft), Lowercase Capital (Twitter), OATV (Foursquare), High Peaks Venture Partners, and Collaborative Fund.

In December of 2013, MakeSpace received $2.1M in seed funding led by Upfront Ventures. The company was also backed by notable angel investors: Naval Ravikant, Ricky Van Veen, Gary and AJ Vaynerchuk, Scott Belsky, Josh Spear, and early Facebook employees Dave Morin, Kevin Colleran, Sam Lessin.

About MakeSpace
MakeSpace is a next generation full-service storage company designed to take the pain out of using traditional self-storage units. With reservations available for scheduled drop-off and pick-up times, MakeSpace is taking the 'self' out of self-storage, so customers never have to step foot in a storage facility again. For $25/month, MakeSpace lets users store four bins of photo-catalogued items, viewable at any time on their MakeSpace account page. All items are easily retrievable - with the click of a button, a driver will bring the selected boxes in under 48 hours to the user's address. MakeSpace is headquartered in New York City, and currently serves New York City and surrounding areas.