30 Under 30: Edward Tung’s Storagehotel stows stuff for UBC students

Credit: Janick Laurent

Edward Tung, 29

Co-founder and CEO, Storagehotel

Life Story: Edward Tung has always been interested in tech and entrepreneurship. He started coding at 11 years old, but even before that, when he was delivering newspapers as a nine-year-old, he employed his friends with a portion of his $5 pay-cheque so he could scale the business into neighbouring streets.

“I remember doing that and then finishing elementary school,” he says.

At 16, Tung and a friend started a landscaping business (aptly named Hard Work Yard Work), and ran it for five years. “We started off pulling weeds and mowing lawns, and ended up doing everything from completely overhauling gardens to trimming—the whole nine yards,” he says.

Tung enrolled at UBC Sauder School of Business in 2011—but between then and graduation in 2016 he became frustrated with having to drag things back and forth from his dorm every year. “Half the items I was moving, I didn’t even need to use during the summer,” he says.

Together with his brother, Jensen, Tung co-founded Storagehotel in 2019. With 10 employees, the moving and storage company helps UBC students stow physical items for fixed periods of time.

Tung says that Storagehotel is different from others in the industry because it provides free boxes and tape, and charges by the item instead of by the hour: “We offer on-demand pickup and delivery, flexible storage plans and no surprise pricing.”

Bottom Line: In its nearly five years of operation, Vancouver-based Storagehotel has served over 5,000 people in B.C. Tung calls his company (which is achieving six-figure annual recurring revenue) “a technology- enabled storage service” because its software can facilitate the entire journey, from building custom storage plans to scheduling pickups/deliveries and organizing inventory.