Assembling a Company

It was 2019. Steve Buchanan pushed the key into the lock and turned the knob. Opening the door, he stepped into the townhouse that would be his home away from home for the next year.

It was drably furnished in corporate relocation style.

“The furniture was serviceable, but there was no soul, nothing that made it feel personal,” said Buchanan. “And one of the three bedrooms — where one of my kids would stay when they visit me – was unfurnished.”

The West Point grad and U.S. Army veteran, who also has a 2013 J.D. from the UW School of Law and a 2014 MBA from UW Tacoma’s Milgard School of Business, was in the Army Reserves. He had been mobilized for deployment to Tampa, Fla.

Buchanan was engaged in a time-honored practice within the five uniformed services of the Department of Defense, called a Temporary Duty Assignment, or TDY. The concept arose during World War II as personnel were expected to perform work at a location not close to their normal duty station or home, and for a length of time exceeding a few days or a week.

Almost all federal agencies have similar temporary-assignment protocols. They cover between two and 365 days, providing a per diem payment, a daily allowance for lodging, meal and incidental costs while on the TDY.

While Buchanan was figuring out the details of his TDY, he was hearing from colleagues who were going through the same process and coming up against the same limitations — inadequate, or complete lack of, furnishing. He thought about how important one’s surroundings are in promoting productivity.

He also knew one additional key detail. Personnel on TDYs would get the entire per diem from the military — which varies by region of the U.S., and by season — only if they spend it all. It’s “use or lose.”

Being the enterprising, entrepreneurially-minded person he is, that last bit stuck in Buchanan’s mind. It jumped out as a potential business model for when he resumed his status as a private citizen.

“Back then, TDYs needing furniture typically involved a rental agreement with a leasing company,” said Buchanan. “That involves lots of logistics, with warehousing, distribution centers and shipping. I thought, why can’t I build a business that rents brand-new furniture and lets the customer leave it at the end of their TDY or buy it at a discount from the list price? It was a matter of figuring out a price point that would leverage the difference between the per diem rate and the actual cost of the furniture.”

Thus, the idea for TDY Rentals was born.

Vets are Natural Entrepreneurs

This story isn’t only about Buchanan’s business brainstorm.

It’s also about how UW Tacoma is helping military veterans tap into their natural instincts for entrepreneurship, at all kinds of different scales.

And it’s about how Buchanan partnered with VIBE, UW Tacoma’s Veterans Incubator for Better Entrepreneurship to grow TDY Rentals, and how he employed five UW Tacoma interns over the summer of 2023 to propel that growth.

VIBE was founded at UW Tacoma in 2013, under the leadership of former Chancellor Debra Friedman. Its current director, Thomas Kuljam, came on board in 2015. He is a 20-year U.S. Air Force veteran who has his own experience as a small-business founder/owner, and as a commercial banker.

When Buchanan told Kuljam about his idea for a TDY furniture rental business, it wasn’t the first time the two had talked about a start-up.

In 2014, Buchanan’s start-up ChooseVets was one of the first companies that VIBE incubated. “VIBE had a huge impact on me,” Buchanan said in a 2015 profile. “Not only was I encouraged to think bigger, but I was connected into all these resources — mentors, people who became my co-founders and co-workers, funding sources.”

Inevitably, Buchanan learned a lot from the ChooseVets experience. “It was a real roller-coaster ride,” he said. “ChooseVets needed a lot of capital to build out the platform. And it was a type of business that has very thin margins, so you need to dominate the market to get any reasonable returns. There were a couple of other big players that raised a lot of money to do the same thing. We couldn’t compete, so I ended up closing it down.”

Taking controlled risks and knowing when to fold are natural parts of entrepreneurship. There is a seemingly infinite number of variables, many outside the control of the founder, that affect start-up survival. Buchanan didn’t see his experience with ChooseVets as a judgement on his own business acumen, but, rather, as a learning experience.

Scaling it Up

Buchanan had his new business idea, and, being the lawyer that he is, had done intensive research into the regulations around TDYs, furniture rental, and how to purchase, ship, install and ultimately liquidate furniture while minimizing his overhead.

He had drawn up articles incorporating TDY Rentals as an LLC, opened a bank account, and recruited a few early customers from the next year’s batch of reservists doing their TDYs in Tampa.

“We learned a lot at the beginning,” said Buchanan. “Particularly about the logistics of doing the furniture orders, arranging for the delivery. The logistics were a real mess in those early days. But the basic idea worked great.”

So it was time to start scaling things up.

“We didn’t even have a website in the beginning. All my customers were word-of-mouth.”

To reach the next level, Buchanan turned to VIBE.

Buchanan had kept his connection with VIBE since the ChooseVets days. In order to maintain his license to practice law in Washington, he was required to book a certain number of hours of pro bono work. Every Thursday, he would spend time at VIBE providing legal advice to students with business ideas.

He knew there were plenty of talented students getting their degrees in fields like computer science, finance, accounting and marketing. He and Thomas Kuljam, the VIBE director, came up with the idea of TDY Rentals hiring students and recent alumni as paid summer interns to help with the scale-up. (Read profiles of the interns below.)

Confluence of Activity

The TDY Rentals collaboration with UW Tacoma is a case study of the campus’s economic development mission. But it’s just one of an accelerating pace of activities happening on and off campus that signal a strengthening entrepreneurial climate in the South Sound region.

“There’s a thriving, rejuvenated start-up community here in Tacoma,” said Steve Buchanan. “With Startup 253 and the Maritime Blue incubator, and more than one venture capital group making the rounds, there’s kind of a confluence of activity.”

Dr. Jill Purdy, professor and founding faculty member of the Milgard School of Business, spent the past couple of years documenting that activity and building a web of connections among the players. The results can be found via the Entrepreneurship Center at the Milgard School. Resources beyond those offered by UW Tacoma include a list of accelerators and incubators, ranging from Accelerate253 to the William Factory Small Business Incubator.

This year the Milgard School launched a new Entrepreneurship Academy for UW Tacoma undergraduate and graduate students. The free program is divided into two phases. In phase one, over five sessions during autumn quarter, participants learn about the entrepreneurial mindset, how to evaluate a business idea for viability, and network with peers who have complementary skill sets. In phase two, over winter and spring quarters, participants develop a business idea and prepare to launch a new venture.

UW Tacoma’s Institute for Innovation & Global Engagement coordinates an undergraduate minor in innovation and design that is open to all students, regardless of their major. The minor requires 25 credits in core courses, such as an innovation and design studio, and electives, such as a course on innovation in wireless and digital healthcare.

Thomas Kuljam and other campus leaders want to expand the number of companies that incubate in VIBE and hire UW Tacoma students as interns who also receive course credit. TDY Rentals incubated in space that VIBE shares with the Veteran & Military Resource Center, but there is the possibility that additional dedicated space may be opened, yielding a Tacoma-ized version of UW’s famous CoMotion facility on the Seattle campus.

All this sounds great to Steve Buchanan, but is slightly outside his current focus, which is totally on TDY Rentals and the calculated risks that are inherent in a start-up.

But that’s OK. That’s the way the West Point grad and Army vet likes it. After all, this is the same guy that summited Mount Rainier not just once, but nine times.