Ex-financial analyst Mark Lawrence claims to enjoy driving but doesn’t consider the act of parking to be quite as thrilling. He only mirrors the sentiment of a large section of the US metro population, who get stressed out while looking for limited parking slots. As reported in CNBC, it was when Lawrence and co-founder Jeremy Smith (erstwhile roommates) accumulated thousands of dollars in parking tickets that they realized that Chicago’s parking process was severely broken. So, they hit upon the idea for Spothero.

Spothero Co-founders, Jeremy (left) and Mark (PC: Spothero)

“Growing up in the suburbs, one of the most frustrating parts of coming to the city was parking. For drivers in Chicago, it’s always a hassle finding a spot. SpotHero solves the problem by making parking easy and transparent,” said Smith to Serious Startups. “With SpotHero, I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to park because they always have options ready.”

If you wish to drive to the airport, instead of hailing a cab, Spothero lets you book airport parking for a steal as shown in this grid. Or you could use the platform book slots for a whole month/week, to make parking so much more affordable.

When it started off in the Charm City, as mentioned in a segment on WGN radio, Spothero partner-acquisition process was as rudimentary as going door-to-door to ask people to rent out their unused parking spaces. Customers could locate and purchase parking space from the newly launched website but as proof of purchase, they needed to show the printed ticket at the parking lot. Though it now seems antiquated, it was still a big step up from a time when people had to circle around for a spot, stop at the parking gate and pay physical cash.

Then, the free to download Spothero iPhone app was launched in July 2011. And by September 2011, Engineer and entrepreneur Larry Kiss also came onboard as a founder.

In August 2012, the company completed TechStars Chicago, an accelerator program that empowers entrepreneurs to bring new technologies to market. This taught them how to raise more capital and scale. In the same year, the startup raised capital in a seed, an angel and a venture round raking up around $3.01M.

During the Techweek Chicago Growth Summit 2017, Lawrence mentioned that Spothero focused the first three years of its life just catering only to Chicago’s parking spaces. “Other parking apps had scaled to 100+ cities in that time, but we stayed put in Chicago. We tried to bring an enormous amount of value to a small group of people, versus trying to bring a little bit of value to a large group of people,” he added.

To project this value, Spothero placed significant focus on online customer acquisition. So, as Lawrence mentioned in a Techweek feature, Spothero began improving its SEO ranking and setting up auxiliary websites like Airport Parking Guides and GasBuddy.

Then in June 2014, Spothero raised $4.5M during a series venture round led by Chicago Ventures. This was followed by $20M raised in a series B round in August 2015. The funding was earmarked to accelerate the startup’s growth, though by this time Spothero was already growing 20% month-on-month.

In 2015, when they were trying to raise money for Spothero, Lawrence told Business Insider that some investors thought they had ‘already lost’ the proverbial race. This was because the on-demand valet boom was on, featuring big players such as Carbon, Valet Anywhere, Zirx, and Luxe. People seemed to prefer driving their own cars and then have it parked by valet service, with just a click of the app. But Lawrence intuitively knew that this was not a sustainable model, owing to the extremely slim margins of the valet business. It had very high operating costs, including buying parking spots and paying valet’s wages. Even at times when raising money was proving to be difficult, he truly believed in the potential of the Spothero app.

But when the startup saw that competition also going the valet route, it briefly succumbed to the pressure of entering the valet market and launched a pilot valet program in Chicago and New York City. As expected, soon enough, they were forced to pull the plug on this money draining initiative. This further reinforced Lawrence’s faith that an app that lets drivers book parking spots, was the best way to create a billion-dollar on-demand parking company.

By 2018, as Lawrence predicted, most of the big on-demand valet apps either closed shop or were acquired, giving Spothero the run of the parking market.

“I know why they failed,” Lawrence said to Business Insider. “Whenever you sell a product for less than it costs you, that’s a problem.”

This round of funding followed a 100% YoY growth in 2016.

Then in April 2017, SpotHero strategically acquired a leading event parking reservations company Parking Panda, making the former the category-leader across all major off-street parking verticals. It also provided the firm with a strong foothold in Canada. Along the way, Spothero launched a bunch of new technology platforms and applications. And by July 2017, 13+ investors (seeing merit in Spothero) invested $30M in a series C round. This round of funding followed a 100% YoY growth in 2016.

Spothero screenshot (PC: Travelingmom.com)

Today, Spothero is the largest and fastest growing off-street reservation platform in North America with a presence in scores of new neighbourhoods and established partnerships with the largest parking operators. According to the brand website, Spothero has facilitated the parking of 20M+ cars across 5000+ parking facilities, owned by 500+ parking partners, in 50+ major metros. Yet, it doesn’t own or operate any of these parking locations, saving on overhead costs.

All drivers need to do is locate and reserve parking through SpotHero’s free iOS app, Android app or website. And end-users can enjoy discounts of up to 80% on booking the parking spot in advance, depending on the demand. It is able to provide such discounts by striking deals with the parking partners in exchange for space in Spothero’s inventory. The parking app also offers pre-tax benefits.

What’s more, the parking app also gives businesses the facilities to easily manage employee and visitor parking with the Spothero for Business module.

Spothero for Parking Operators

The consumer parking app Spothero, and its closest competitor ParkWhiz, is also a boon for garage owners in the region. These parking tech companies help their parking lot partners secure customers and increase revenue by capturing online demand for parking and efficiently managing excess inventory.

What SpotHero and ParkWhiz do is take a 15% cut, from these partners, on every parking spot rented.

It also has its own end-to-end parking mobility platform, HeroConnect. This SaaS product provides parking partners with ‘tools to offer transactional parking functionality in any native app, website or operating system’.

In September 2016, Spothero also launched EVENTHERO that takes care of everything from inventory management to customer support to improving the guest parking experience and grow event parking revenues. It also boasts a handheld POS system, digital passes and integrated data and reporting features.

Scaling the Parking App to Infinity and Beyond

Lawrence believes that in today’s day and age, it is critical for companies to be ‘very creative with hiring’ owing to the need for a vast range of skill-sets.

In January 2018, when speaking at the Techweek Chicago Growth Summit 2017 Lawrence said, “We’ve scaled to a 20-person marketing team in past eight months, led by Kristen Cho [VP of Marketing]. And we spend around 7 figures a month for this.”

In September 2018, SpotHero raised its most recent funding of $10M, as an extension of the series C round from 2017, bringing the total amount raised to $68M. The company plans to hire developers and build more partnerships around the “broader mobility sector.”

Moving away from just cars, Spothero is also in talks with scooter companies to enable the docking of these e-vehicles in parking garages. Additionally, in an interview with Built In, Lawrence mentioned that the startup plans to invest in the autonomous vehicle and smart city technologies.

In October 2017, the startup opened an office in Detroit, the auto industry hub of North America. Especially in the current world of automated cars, the move was well-timed as it would enable Spothero to strengthen relationships with auto partners and build the most intuitive parking experience for the next generation of automobiles.

Then, on January 2018, SpotHero debuted a disruptive voice-activated parking reservation feature, powered by Google Assistant, in Android Auto. By July 2018, the startup fitted 500+ Chicago-based parking facilities with license plate recognition technology, IoT sensors and other hardware to make it autonomous-vehicle ready. Along with support from SpotHero’s proprietary software, these parking lots are now primed to allow driverless vehicles to automatically find, access and pay for private parking. In that sense, Spothero is truly future-ready.  

The post TIME magazine lauds parking app by Spothero appeared first on Techweek.

Usually when municipal governments want to buy a service or a product, they put out a specific and inflexible requirement. While this sounds sensible, it is actually problematic as governments are risk-averse. Therefore, the tenders or Requests for Proposals (RFPs) they seek are heavy on clauses and regulations that stifle innovation. They also limit the pool of companies who can bid on the work.

What Citymart is proposing is that instead of procuring by publishing design specifications, procure by publishing problem statements. What this means is that if a government wanted to reduce theft in a neighbourhood, it would procure for this problem statement instead of asking for bids for CCTV cameras. Subsequently, innovators would be free to pitch a product but they could also suggest a service, policy change or any other means of accomplishing the goal.

For example, when Miami-Dade County wanted to procure a green stormwater management infrastructure, it followed Citymart’s advice of not giving design specs to contractors. Instead, the county used Citymart’s digital platform to tell people the final goal: a green stormwater management infrastructure. It then, Citymart’s blog says, received solutions which were “previously unknown to the team, but successfully proven elsewhere.”

Such public procurement innovations is the reason Sascha Haselmayer started Citymart in 2011. Haselmayer attended architecture school but soon “realized that there were more effective ways to make cities better for its residents than just designing buildings”. He believes that (city governments) must “specify the problem they want to solve and show metrics on what success looks like. And then allow the market to inspire them to find the best solutions.”

CEO and Founder, Sascha Haselmayer

Seeking solutions, not specifications

Cities have persistent, rising needs due to demographic shift, migration, and often reckless urbanization. Despite the unpredictability, Citymart believes that there’s scope to deliver meaningful innovation and change the way cities function if they use problem statements instead of specifications in their procurement process and lower the entry barriers for vendors.

Initially, Haselmayer founded a consultancy, Interlace-Invent and a non-profit Living Labs local which worked on development strategies for cities that helped him set the groundwork for Citymart. Today, Citymart has worked with 100+ global cities on various public procurements.

Pegged at $4.5 trillion by Citymart, municipal public procurement is one of the most impactful and exciting governmental process. But many, Haselmayer writes, think of public procurement as a ‘dark art’.

During their research, Citymart found that several cities were accepting solutions that were ineffective in meeting needs of transport, social care, education and economic development and ignoring solutions proven effective in other cities. He notes that there are actually four ways cities can deliver better service. First, by systematically documenting the needs they intended to solve. Second, validating their project designs by learning from peers in other cities with relevant experiences (Citymart has found that a new urban solution proven to be effective and affordable in one city will take more than 40 years to reach just 1% of other cities). Third, diversifying the vendor base to include SMEs, start-ups, social enterprises, and vendors who may not yet work with government, and finally, by allowing the market to educate them about different approaches as part of the process.

Citymart’s Digital Solutions

Citymart has used these learnings to develop two of its main products: Opportunity Builder and Bidspark. Both these softwares have been put in use in several cities, but one of the best examples is Citymart’s work for the city of Long Beach.

In 2015, the city had identified a lack of affordable downtown workspace as a challenge for local innovators. But the city’s innovation team also wanted to portray the city as a place that welcomes, supports, and ultimately exports advancements in technology. Therefore, instead of spelling out a fixed requirement, the city asked how could they create a local ecosystem that supports the innovation economy.

They used Citymart’s Opportunity Builder platform to better define the problems and the solutions they were seeking. It is easier to understand the Opportunity Builder platform if thought of as a software that helps governments supplement and refine its Request For Proposals (RFP) and explore global solutions.

Citymart’s solutions (PC: Citymart)

Additionally, Citymart also utilises market intelligence, metrics and workflows to focus procurements on outcomes. The Opportunity Builder platform, Citymart’s blog notes, helped the city’s innovation team realize that renewal of Harvey Milk Park, was important to the residents. The city’s concept therefore changed from only creating a co-working space to creating a more inclusive space with new features ranging from mobile-device charging stations to public ping pong tables. Now, instead of seeking bids for pre-made products, the city’s innovation team used another Citymart software, BidSpark, to put out “request for solutions” which “invited a range of diverse and creative vendors to demonstrate and demo their products and technologies to residents with no commitment from the city to buy.”

The biggest benefit of this exercise was not just the inclusive community space but an improved reputation of the city government which, through this project, showed its focus on broader urban issues related to public space and inclusivity.

It’s after such instances that Citymart is able to help governments look beyond their specifications and implement problem-based procurement. This also helps cities invite new ideas and involve communities to solve problems. So far, Citymart has worked on  a range of projects such as reducing chronic disease in London and stormwater management in Miami, to digital equity in New Orleans and independent living in Sheffield.

Above all, the startup and its founder are proving to be the trailblazers in changing how services reach the residents of these cities. But even when they do, Haselmayer told New York Times, “Lots of governments are using the challenges but that’s only just scratching the surface.”

The post Citymart Is Changing How Cities Solve Pressing Urban Problems appeared first on Techweek.

Today, ‘proptech’ companies in the USA are attracting a significant amount of investor attention. The independent first-of-its-kind rating system, Rentlogic, measures the quality of multi-family residential buildings in the city that never sleeps. Rentlogic currently ranks more than 1 million properties in New York. These rankings are based on tracking of previous tenant complaints (verified) and city-issued violations, physical inspections and objective health and safety checks. The startup’s website then offers the building grades up for those looking to rent the property.

Rentlogic raised $2.4M in seed funding in Aug 2018. Investors, involved in this funding round, include the Urban-X accelerator, Urban.Us, and managing partner at private equity firm Accretive, Edgar Bronfman Jr.

The company expects to use the funds to achieve two goals. First is its planned expansion to other cities, such as San Francisco and Chicago. And the second goal is to grow its sales and operations team.

Ire of a Wronged Tenant

As with most tech start-ups, Rentogic too was born out of a disappointing experience faced by the founder. Yale Fox, a Canadian living in the US, happened to fall sick soon after moving into his beautiful apartment in West Village. After many visits to the doctor, he was diagnosed with a mold-related illness. When the landlord refused to fix the situation, Fox took him to court.

Unfortunately, in the interim, having paid to fix the mold problem on his own, Fox didn’t have any evidence to incriminate the house owner. So he presented to the judge, a model that depicted the complaints filed against his landlord, from public records, and other public assessments of the building. To this presentation, the judge is known to have laughingly responded, “Welcome to New York and I’m sorry this happened to you… and you should definitely build an app because New York City needs this.”

Suffice to say, Fox won the legal battle.

Rated ‘A’ for its Business Model

In 2013, he went on to put the judge’s recommendation to action and build the Rentlogic app prototype (called: RentCheck).

“Every industry has bad apples,” Fox said in a Bloomberg interview. “This is about exposing them in hopes that they adjust their behavior.”

At the same time in big cities where people pay almost 50% of their salary as rent, Rentlogic offers a credible means for them to conduct background checks on the property.

Though loaded with good intentions, Fox soon realized that Rentlogic still did not have a sound revenue model. After several algorithm iterations, he designed a unique, yet thorough, rating system for buildings.

Similar to a credit score, Rentlogic Ratings are A through F letter grades – based on 150 different variables from scrupulously collected data. The rating is a normalized measure of an apartment’s living condition, as compared to other buildings in the city.

This unique proposition was thereafter marketed to property owners as a super-affordable service, which needs to be renewed every year. And this meant that the startup could finally make money. It also marked the transition of RentCheck into Rentlogic.  

“It’s the same way a building would get LEED-certified,” Fox told TechCrunch. Rentlogic employs neutral third parties to deliver objective, fact-based reports to landowners who request for Rentlogic Certified Building Program. He believes that it’s a good way for landlords to differentiate their property from others in the neighborhood.

In the current zero-transparency property marketplace, Rentlogic also protects owners from fabricated complaints and tenants from bad tenants. In fact, Rentlogic has even partnered with private equity firm Blackstone to rate their $5.5B Stuyvesant Town purchase.

They now have also tied-up with roommate-hunting services like Nooklyn and Roomi, to harness its ratings.

Independent Ratings Bring Home the Bacon

While it was initially a challenge to get landlords to accept this rating system, the scenario is very much different now. Owing to the overcrowding of New York’s housing market with new luxury apartments, currently, there has been a drop in demand for rentals. Naturally, the rents have also fallen by 3% from a year earlier to $3,400. That’s where Rentlogic works its magic by helping property owners really set themselves apart from others. The seal of reliability that Rentlogic offers gives landowners have a greater chance of securing that elusive tenant.

Owing to the currently astronomical cost of new tenant acquisition (up to two months’ rent) that owners need to bear, investing in an affordable and trustworthy independent building certification would be most prudent. Rentlogic’s building certification starts from just 20 cents per unit per month. So, if the certification helps property owners get even one long-term tenant, then that is immediate ROI.

The Vision for a Profitable Future

Fox is focused on developing a loyal following of apartment-hunters who are thoroughly dependant on Rentlogic for its unbiased building certification. Once this happens, landowners would automatically see merit in regularly reviving their contract with the startup. And that’s it, the business model becomes profitable.

At the same time, Fox is intent on creating supplementary paid tools that help landlords market their apartments better – without compromising on the fairness of the platform’s ratings for renters.

The post Rentlogic: ‘A to F’ of Building Certification appeared first on Techweek.

This transactional platform was built to enable drivers, fleets and connected vehicles to locate and book the best parking spaces in advance. It even allows users to save up to 50% on the parking rack-rates.

In their bid to further their cause, ParkWhiz recently made news by partnering with popular baseball club, Arizona Diamondbacks. The tie-up allows fans to seamlessly find, book and pay for parking spaces before reaching a Chase Field game. Featuring the largest nationwide inventory of parking, ParkWhiz has also entered into agreements with brands including Ford, Ticketmaster, Groupon, and Madison Square Garden.

So, how exactly does ParkWhiz deliver on its promise of freeing the city from its parking woes?

From Parking ‘Argh’ to ‘aha’!

There are plenty of parking lots, garages, and driveways that are being rented out, but they exist in a highly unorganized marketplace. This leaves the daily commuter at their wit’s end, with a tonne of questions – should one haggle for parking rates? What’s a fair price to pay? Or even, where is the closest unoccupied parking slot?

Here is where ParkWhiz comes in. By showing users the costs upfront and reflecting real-time city parking availability at hundreds of partner locations, it seeks to create a controlled and structured parking marketplace. This makes it possible for drivers to make a booking, at a predetermined rate, for a guaranteed parking spot at the selected destination.

On arriving at the garage, users only need to show their ParkWhiz mobile parking pass to gain entry. This means they can get in and out of a parking lot in a jiffy, without any unnecessary documentation. Those who reserve parking spots for later, and prepay, even get great discounts.

What’s more, by carefully vetting each parking lot and garage, the startup offers honest descriptions on the platform. Similar to the review section of Amazon and Uber, ParkWhiz also enables users to check customers’ reviews for each vendor. This is a sure-shot way to make an informed decision about parking purchases, every time.

Today, the Chicago-based app boasts 1 million daily searches, has parked over seven million vehicles and is operational in over 190 cities across North America.

Parking for Businesses

With a business to run, deals to be closed, and clients to be won-over, the last thing on anyone’s mind is to help employees find parking at work every day. For companies that need to, on a regular basis, manage employee and visitor parking — ParkWhiz is the next best thing since sliced bread.

Along with offering employees the convenience of choosing from a wide city parking repository, this technology also features an integrated accounting system that helps keeps track of all parking expenses. Companies can also just book parking for their clients, who will then receive clear directions and a fully-paid-for or discounted e-parking pass.

By allowing the enterprise or employees to book slots in advance, ParkWhiz’s no-cost business programme enables the saving of both, time and money.

Efficient Parking Management in your Pocket

Apart from making life easier for the end user and businesses, ParkWhiz also owns a software that parking owners can use to manage and market their rental space.

These owners need to only sign into the ParkWhiz website, mobile apps, and data APIs to gain widespread exposure for their property. Its seller console also makes paper trails redundant by automating tiresome back-office reporting.

The biggest allure of this solution though is its various inbuilt algorithms that manage matters of payment processing, inventory management, yield management and fraud protection – making the running of a parking business an effortless affair. There is also the ParkWhiz Mobile attendant app that lets drivers rapidly check-in with the built-in QR scanner, improving the productivity of the parking garages – especially during peak hours.

By retaining 15% of the price charged by the parking operator, the parking app is also able to monetize these services quite nicely.

Connected Future of Transport

As part of its endeavour to stay on top of the tech-game, in June 2018, ParkWhiz acquired a Tel-Aviv parking app that supports drive-up mobile payment option.

Very soon, all a user will need to do is drive up to the garage, have their parking ticket generated, wave their phone in front of a payment machine, et voila! The payment is done. This cool new functionality will mean that there will no longer be a need for physical money to pay for parking.

Such technology is really just one building block of the grand future of transportation that is yet to be realised. Once smart roads and smart cars become more mainstream, such parking apps will be more deeply connected to drivers – enabling a far superior driver experience.

The post City Parking Blues? ParkWhiz to the rescue appeared first on Techweek.