TheCubicle

I sell Rubik’s Cubes for a living.

It all started with my passion for solving the Rubik’s Cube, which started the summer before starting high school. Then, in my freshman year at NYU, I met my eventual co-founder Phil, a junior at the time, in the back of a classroom. He was speedsolving a Rubik’s Cube in the back of the classroom, and so we struck up a conversation and became friends over our shared interest in speedcubing.

Then, one day, he randomly asked me if I wanted to start a Rubik’s Cube selling business. I had no idea what I was doing, but I said sure, why not. And with that, TheCubicle was born. We sold Rubik’s Cubes out of our off-campus housing in Peter Cooper Village, packing the orders during our spare time, and walking them over to the nearest post office.

At the beginning, the sales were very slow. We were a new entrant into a pretty crowded field (with around 5 competitors in the US), and our main means of getting the word out was using Phil’s personal YouTube channel, which had a decent following. And then from there, people gradually found out and spread the word about us.

It was impossible for Phil or myself to see what the business would become, and we considered giving up at various points in our early days. But each time, we ended up sticking with it.

And that consistency paid off. The sales grew slowly but steadily. When it came time for me to graduate, I decided to go full time on TheCubicle, and two years later, my co-founder Phil re-joined me after graduating from law school.

We started off in that Peter Cooper Village apartment, and then moved the business into my parents’ house in Mount Kisco. Eventually, we ran out of space there, and had to rent an office in nearby Pleasantville, and two years later, we relocated to an even bigger space in Elmsford, where we continue to be today.

Today, I continue to own and operate TheCubicle with Phil. It has been almost 13 years now (as of the time of writing this), which feels like such an incredible milestone to me. Who would have guessed that this little college side hustle would have taken me this far.

However, these days, I’m not quite as passionate about the Rubik’s Cubes as I used to be. For the past few years, I’ve been looking to branch out into other fields of business (both in adjacent and non-adjacent fields), and I’ve been slowly moving away from the day to day operations at the business.

TheCubicle will always have a place in my heart. It was my first foray into the world of entrepreneurship, and I’m so fortunate that it just so happened to work out. And it feels amazing to me that it all started when I took a chance with Phil on the business that fateful day 13 years ago.