If you run SiteLink or storEDGE, pull your contract this week. On September 8, Storable announced Scott Chancellor as CEO, replacing co-founder Chuck Gordon after 18 years. The useful response isn't an opinion about Chancellor. It's knowing your own position before the new leadership's priorities turn up in your renewal terms
What happened
Gordon built Storable over 18 years and stays on the board as an advisor. Chancellor comes from outside storage. Most recently he was CEO of Aircall, where he led the push into AI, nearly doubled revenue and took the company to profitability. Before that he ran Humu, which he sold to Perceptyx, and was chief product and technology officer at Apptio ahead of its acquisition by IBM. Earlier still, he founded the AWS Insights business at Amazon.
Read that CV as a pattern, not a biography. It's the record of someone who scales software businesses, makes them more profitable and positions them for a transaction. Storable is majority-owned by private-equity firm EQT, with Cove Hill Partners holding a minority stake. Boards backed by private equity don't recruit that profile to keep things as they are. They recruit it to grow revenue per customer and, in time, deliver an outcome for the fund. That isn't a criticism of anyone. It's the job description
Why their CEO change is your problem
Your management software isn't just a tool you use. It's the system of record for your rent roll, and with Storable the same company often holds your payments, your tenant insurance programme and your marketplace listings as well. If your bank changed hands, you'd pay attention without needing proof that anything was wrong. A PMS vendor that touches this much of your revenue deserves the SAME reflex.
I've run storage on this class of software for years. Nothing changes day to day this month. What changes is the direction of travel on pricing, packaging and roadmap, and that takes twelve to twenty-four months to reach you. That lag is your head start. Use it.
What usually follows a founder handoff
The playbook after a founder hands a multi-product platform to an operator isn't a mystery.
Product lines get rationalised. Storable runs overlapping platforms, and over time one becomes the go-forward product while the others get maintenance-level investment.
Packaging gets reviewed. Chancellor's stated day-one focus includes bringing AI into everyday workflows, and AI features rarely arrive as free line items. They arrive as tiers.
Attached products get pushed harder. Payments, insurance and marketplace fees are the fastest way to grow revenue per customer without winning a single new logo.
Some of this may be good for you. All of it changes your negotiating position.
Four moves that cost nothing
Pull the contract. Find the renewal date, the auto-renew notice window and any price escalator language. Most operators I talk to find the notice window is 60 or 90 days and the renewal is closer than they thought. Your bargaining power only exists inside that window. Outside it, you're a captive audience with opinions.
Test your data exit. Request a full export - tenants, ledgers, unit history, payment records - and open the files. Not because you're leaving. An exit you've never tested isn't an option, it's a hope, and vendors price hope accordingly. If the export is incomplete or unusable, you want to know two years before you need it.
Count your attach points. List which Storable products you chose on purpose and which arrived by default or in a bundle: payments, insurance, listings, access control. Each is a separate dependency, a separate margin for the vendor and a separate switching cost for you. You can't negotiate a relationship you've never itemised.
Ask the go-forward question in writing. If you're on SiteLink, ask your account manager: which platform gets the investment over the next three years, and what does the migration path look like if it isn't mine? You may get a careful answer. Get it anyway and keep it on file. Careful answers age in interesting ways.
The case for staying calm
This could turn out well for customers. Chancellor's Aircall record is a real product and execution record, and storage software has plenty of room for both. Gordon staying on the board is real continuity. And switching platforms has real costs - migration, retraining, rebuilt integrations - that almost always outweigh the irritation that prompted the switch.
I don't recommend leaving Storable over a press release. I recommend refusing to be the passive party in a relationship the other side is about to review. A new CEO will re-underwrite the customer base as part of the new plan. Underwrite them back.
Most operators can't say where their contract, their data and their dependencies stand today. You don't need anyone's help for step one. It's your paper. Read it.
When the answer points to a platform decision you can't easily reverse, that's the kind of call our Fractional CTO engagement is built for.
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