A VC in Vacationland

.@jason's perspective during the boxbee.com presentation. #launch2013 #launchfestival (Photo credit: kate.gardiner)

According to xconomy, the San Francisco-based Boxbee took home the best overall new startup award this year at the Launch Conference based on its plans to breathe new life into the messy offline world of urban storage. Simply put, the service aims to simplify the storage process so that users can just box up what they want to store and let it take care of the rest.

For those who are moving, traveling, or are just looking for extra space at home, the startup’s “secure storage hive” allows you to order boxes, which it claims it can deliver to your doorstep within the hour.

Once you’ve packed your boxes, Boxbee helps you to schedule a pickup, taking the lifting, truck-packing and transporting out of your hands. On top of that, the startup claims to go the extra mile to adapt the whole storage process to its busy customers, by allowing you to schedule pickups and returns on the Web or via its mobile app and promises to complete pickup and returns in less than two hours. Well, two hours for “carloads” and next-day pickup and delivery for storage that requires a cargo van or truck.

The service then stores your possessions until you need them again, and provides complementary services to sweeten the deal, allowing you to ship your boxes elsewhere from its app or web dashboard or have them donated. To streamline the process of pickup and returns and offer more flexibility, Boxbee’s dashboard keeps an inventory of images for the contents of each box in your account, including tagged descriptions, which allow you to choose the particular box you need without requiring someone to open it and rifle through its contents. It will then return the box to you in two hours.