Calvin News

Junior Keegan Hall came to Calvin looking for a well-rounded college experience. Recruited to play golf, he enjoyed building faith-centered community with both his team and Calvin Startup Garage during his first two years at Calvin. This year he is stepping back from golf, which will allow him to focus on finding an internship and growing his own business.

SeekSpace is a moving and storage company that helps students move their belongings out of their dorms for the summer. Students pack up their belongings and leave them in their dorm room, and SeekSpace picks up and moves their things to a location of the students’ choice or to SeekSpace’s own storage area. Hall landed on his simple but savvy business concept as a first-year student.

“After moving in and out of the dorms once, I thought, this is kind of a pain. There were moving companies for moving from houses or apartments, but I thought there should be something for college students, because there’s a lot of stress involved.”

The stresses Hall refers to include moving out while also studying for final exams, securing coveted space in the trunk room of a dorm for personal belongings, and figuring out where to store larger items like sofas over the summer months.  

Like many entrepreneurs, Hall started his big idea on a small scale. During his first year, he had only two customers, but this summer he saw a sizable increase in revenue. 
Hall keeps his expenses low by renting a moving truck on a short-term basis and using a designated area of his parents’ home for storage.

“It’s a secure, dry space,” he says of the room his parents offered him; though as SeekSpace grows, Hall anticipates utilizing climate-controlled storage units, instead.

Hall passes his low overhead expenses on to his customers, offering affordable prices to college students who may only have one or two large items to store and who do not need or want the expense of renting an entire storage unit at a public facility.

In Hall’s mind, there are few what-ifs for the future of SeekSpace: it’s just a matter of time before his concept catches on. “The benefit of using SeekSpace is hands-free accessibility to storage. If you live in a place like California, that’s a huge benefit. When you come back to Michigan, your things will be delivered and waiting in your new space.”

SeekSpace has also provided Hall with the opportunity to apply what he learns in his business classes to the day-to-day operations of a real business. With the support of Jon Ver Lee and the Calvin Startup Garage community, learning this way has been both manageable and rewarding.

“Going in freshman year, starting a business, I really didn’t know a whole lot about it. Talking to Jon, who’s done it before, was very helpful.” 
Hall also appreciated the many guest speakers at Startup Garage meetings—successful and experienced entrepreneurs who began their journeys much the same way Hall and his peers have. The best advice he’s received along the way?

“Done is better than perfect,” Hall says.

“A lot of entrepreneurs get stuck at perfect and then don’t take that last step to make something happen. When I was first growing, I wanted to perfect everything, but I learned I had to get the business functioning and get it out there. That’s how you get your feedback as well, and you can always tweak things along the way.”

Hall says his faith also plays a role in how he views his business and what it has to offer customers.

“I remember one of the guest speakers at Startup Garage talked about how you can go out there and grow super-fast unethically, getting all these customers in a poor way. But I’m not here to make a quick buck.”  

Offering a meaningful service that fills a real need is catching on, too. Hall connected with Calvin director of housing and operations, Jay Wise, who is thrilled to help Hall get the word out to students about SeekSpace, a service Wise is happy to welcome on campus.  
What most inspires Hall is seeing how his service takes stress off his customers.

“Going back to the why is something I really hold. I’m here to make things easier on them, and that’s a great feeling when I can do that.”