• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI

2

Despite having a $165 million net worth, Scarlett Johansson says work-life balance doesn’t exist—and the first step to success is admitting that

3

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises

1

Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI

2

Despite having a $165 million net worth, Scarlett Johansson says work-life balance doesn’t exist—and the first step to success is admitting that

3

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
TechSharing Economy

How This Storage Startup Envisions a True ‘Sharing Economy’

By
Kia Kokalitcheva
Kia Kokalitcheva
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Kia Kokalitcheva
Kia Kokalitcheva
Down Arrow Button Icon
May 6, 2016, 9:00 AM ET
Courtesy of Omni

Most San Franciscans share two housing problems: sky-high rents and not much storage space.

The former won’t be solved anytime soon with any sort of magic solution, but the latter has hope. Like most other challenges faced by young urban dwellers, there are startups ready to tackle it. One of them, a San Francisco-based company called Omni, provides a storage service for that group. It picks up a customer’s items, photographs and catalogs them online, then safely packages and stores them away in one of its warehouses.

Need to get those skis for a trip this weekend? With the tap of an app, Omni drops them off the next day for free or within a couple of hours for a small fee. It will, of course, come back to pick them up once that ski trip is over.

Omni, which debuted its service last fall, is a hybrid between a storage company and a tool for its customers to better manage the space in their homes. On Thursday the company revealed it has raised a total of $10 million in funding, including a recently closed $7 million round.

“I think we’re offering a service that’s way more about a lifestyle,” Omni co-founder and CEO Tom McLeod told Fortune in an interview.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.

At the moment, Omni stores its customers’ “tens of thousands” of items in three warehouses in San Francisco and by the end of the year its facilities will occupy more than 100,000 square feet, the company says. For standard-size items, Omni charges 25 cents per item, per month, $2 per month for large items like bikes and baby strollers, and $5 for a box of items like tree ornaments.

When a customer requests an item—or several—back, Omni delivers it for free the next day, or the same day for a $4.99 fee, within three hours for $9.99, or within two hours for $19.99. It also charges fees for late cancellations, delivery outside its area of operation, or delivery to an address different from the customer’s primary address on file, among other reasons. The company isn’t currently profitably, but McLeod says that it does have positive gross margins.

At the moment, McLeod says he sees three main categories of customers use his company’s service: fresh college graduates with their first job and small first apartment, more established young professionals who’ve amassed a lot of stuff and need to declutter, and the young couple with kids who need to make space for their growing family.

Omni has also attracted other businesses as customers, says McLeod. Samantha Smith, for example, who owns a San Francisco-based event-planning company, told Fortune she’s been using the service to store excess decorations, which allows her to reuse them and save her clients money. Melody McCloskey, co-founder and CEO of beauty services marketplace StyleSeat, said her team uses the service to store trade show props and other materials that previously took over her startup’s office.

Though Omni doesn’t currently offer a version of its service specifically designed for business customers, it has introduced some features, like the ability to group together identical items when browsing stored items in the mobile app, that businesses in particular find quite useful.

Still, according to Highland Capital Partners’ Manish Patel, who led Omni’s latest funding round, Omni’s core business will come from consumers, not businesses.

For more on the sharing economy, watch:

Of course, Omni is far from the only company providing storage on demand. Along with traditional unit storages companies, it competes with other startups like Clutter, which recently raised an additional $20 million in funding, MakeSpace, and Livible, to name a few.

But perhaps where the company differs is its bigger vision of putting the items it stores to work. Eventually, McLeod envisions, his customers will be able to loan out, sell, or donate the items they store. For example, a customer could lend another a pair of stored skis for a trip. Or it could ask customers to donate old clothes to a charity, or connect two sneaker collectors who want to trade coveted shoes.

Eventually, Omni could create a true “sharing economy” by turning its storage service into a dynamic marketplace. It could easily analyze its customers’ catalogs, recommend that a customer donate an old suit he or she hasn’t touched in over a year, for example, and provide a way to dispose of it.

“There’s no two ways about it, when you open the app, you see all these items and it feels like you should be able to do more” than just store and retrieve items, he told Fortune, adding that customers often request such features like the ability to donate or sell their items.

Though it hasn’t delved into those plans, McLeod says he hopes to add at least one such feature to the service in the next year. He also plans to use its new funding to start expanding beyond the Bay Area late this year or early next year, though he declined to share which city Omni will go to next.

McLeod co-founded Omni in 2014 with Aaron Wiener and Adam Dexter. Along with Highland Capital Partners, Omni’s investors include rapper Drake, actress Sophia Bush, Scooter Braun (best known as singer Justin Bieber’s manager), business executive Judith Estrin, entrepreneur Shervin Pishevar, and venture capital firms 8VC and Bolt Capital.

An earlier version of the story referred to 8VC by its former name. The story has been updated.

About the Author
By Kia Kokalitcheva
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Tech

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Tech

AI poised to tilt job market leverage toward older workers
AIHiring
AI poised to tilt job market leverage toward older workers
By Victor Swezey and BloombergMay 16, 2026
19 minutes ago
SpaceX heads into a record-shattering IPO with the ‘deepest moat that exists today’ as investors vow to ‘never bet against Elon’
InnovationIPOs
SpaceX heads into a record-shattering IPO with the ‘deepest moat that exists today’ as investors vow to ‘never bet against Elon’
By Jason MaMay 16, 2026
7 hours ago
tarot
AICulture
We talked to 12 tarot card readers who are using AI. They split in 2 camps, with big implications for the technology
By Ziv Epstein, Farnaz Jahanbakhsh, Vana Goblot and The ConversationMay 16, 2026
9 hours ago
liberman
Commentarystart-ups
We watched social media concentrate. The same thing is happening in AI, only at a deeper layer
By David Liberman and Daniil LibermanMay 16, 2026
10 hours ago
mustafa suleyman
AIMicrosoft
Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
By Jake AngeloMay 16, 2026
11 hours ago
olivier
CommentaryAnthropic
I’ve been studying Big Tech for a long time. What just happened with Anthropic and the Pentagon terrifies me
By Olivier SylvainMay 16, 2026
11 hours ago

Most Popular

Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
AI
Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
By Jake AngeloMay 16, 2026
11 hours ago
Despite having a $165 million net worth, Scarlett Johansson says work-life balance doesn’t exist—and the first step to success is admitting that
Success
Despite having a $165 million net worth, Scarlett Johansson says work-life balance doesn’t exist—and the first step to success is admitting that
By Preston ForeMay 13, 2026
3 days ago
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
Politics
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
By Jake AngeloMay 12, 2026
4 days ago
Meet the 20-year-old CEO who launched a company in high school to solve Gen Z's entry-level job crisis
Future of Work
Meet the 20-year-old CEO who launched a company in high school to solve Gen Z's entry-level job crisis
By Jake AngeloMay 16, 2026
15 hours ago
Current price of oil as of May 15, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of May 15, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerMay 15, 2026
1 day ago
‘You’re not a hero, you’re a liability’: Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary warns Gen Z founders to stop glorifying hustle culture
Future of Work
‘You’re not a hero, you’re a liability’: Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary warns Gen Z founders to stop glorifying hustle culture
By Jacqueline MunisMay 16, 2026
11 hours ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.