SpotHero is a digital

parking Parking is the act of stopping and disengaging a vehicle and usually leaving it unoccupied. Parking on one or both sides of a road is often permitted, though sometimes with restrictions. Some buildings have parking facilities for use of the bu ...

marketplace A marketplace, market place, or just market, is a location where people regularly gather for the purchase and sale of provisions, livestock, and other goods. In different parts of the world, a marketplace may be described as a ''souk'' (from ...

that connects drivers looking to reserve and pay for parking spaces with parking lots, parking garages and valet services. The company, which operates a

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

and

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

as well as a parking developer platform, is available in over 300 cities in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. The company is based in

Chicago, Illinois Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

History

Early beginnings

SpotHero was founded by Mark Lawrence and Jeremy Smith in Chicago in 2011, with co-founder Larry Kiss joining the company soon after.Kate Rogers
"SpotHero: An app that makes parking reservations,"

CNBC CNBC is an American List of business news channels, business news channel owned by the NBCUniversal News Group, a unit of Comcast's NBCUniversal. The network broadcasts live business news and analysis programming during the morning, Day ...

, May 7, 2015. The company started out as a peer-to-peer parking marketplace, where people could rent out their own private parking spots, before expanding the platform to partner with parking companies and garages.Kia Kokalitcheva
"SpotHero launches its parking app in SF, and on-demand valet startups should worry,"

VentureBeat ''VentureBeat'' is an American technology website headquartered in San Francisco, California. ''VentureBeat'' is a tech news source that publishes news, analysis, long-form features, interviews, and videos. The ''VentureBeat'' company was fou ...

, December 9, 2014.Alex Moazed
"SpotHero Paves the Way for Parking,"
'' Inc.'', November 18, 2016. In December 2012, SpotHero raised $2.5 million in

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

funds from

Battery Ventures Battery Ventures is a global, technology-focused investment firm. Founded in 1983, the firm makes venture-capital and private-equity investments in markets across the globe from offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Israel and Lond ...

(lead),

500 Startups 500 Global (previously 500 Startups) is an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator founded in 2010 by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai. The fund admitted a first "class" of twelve startups to its incubator office in Mountain View, Californ ...

, Bullet Time, e.Ventures, OCA Ventures, New World Ventures,

Lightbank Lightbank is a financial organization that specializes in making venture capital investments including seed investments, Series A round and late-stage investments in companies across the United States. The company was founded in 2010, and is hea ...

, and Draper Associates; at the time, it only served Milwaukee and Chicago. In June 2014, SpotHero raised an additional $4.5 million in funding and announced new board of directors members, including

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...

's Mike Gamson, Match.com's

Sam Yagan Sam Yagan (born April 10, 1977) is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of OkCupid. Time (magazine), ''Time'' named Yagan Time 100, one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2013. He is the co-founder and ...

, and venture capitalist Sam Guren. The company raised $20 million in Series B funding in 2015, and an additional $30 million in a Series C round in July 2017.John Pletz
"SpotHero tops off with another $30 million,"
''Crain's Chicago Business'', July 18, 2017. In September 2018, the company raised an additional $10 million, bringing its total raised since launching to $68 million. In August 2019 SpotHero announced $50 million in Series D funding led by Macquarie Capital, bringing the company's total funding to date to $118 million.

Growth and expansion

Between 2011 and 2013, the company expanded from 5 employees to 22, grew to seven business markets (Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Baltimore, Newark, and Milwaukee) and opened an office in New York City. By August 2015, SpotHero serviced 5 additional cities: Denver, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. In July 2016, the company expanded to Los Angeles, and in January 2017 added 13 additional cities, including Austin, Indianapolis, Miami and San Diego.Meg Graham

''Chicago Tribune'', January 26, 2017. In 2020, the company was recognized as the fifteenth-largest privately held consumer marketplace. As of November 2020, the company services over 300 cities in North America with a network of over 7,000 garages. SpotHero for Business was launched in March 2017, as a business-focused service with features and tools for paying, managing and organizing parking expenses. The company also launched a free developer platform to help businesses integrate parking reservations into their existing apps. In May 2017, SpotHero announced a partnership with commuter employee benefits administrator WageWorks allowing users to pay pre-tax dollars for daily parking near their places of work.Cheryl V. Jackson

''Chicago Tribune'', May 16, 2017. In 2018, SpotHero was named to ''

Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

'' magazine's inaugural list of 50 Genius Companies that are inventing the future. According to ''Time'', "By allowing users to reserve a spot rather than circling dense city centers, apps like SpotHero can help stem congestion and pollution." That year, SpotHero purchased 500 Waze beacons for $15,000 and gave them to the

Chicago Department of Transportation The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT ) is an executive department of the City of Chicago responsible for the safety, environmental sustainability, maintenance, and aesthetics of the surface transportation networks and public ways withi ...

to install in the lower roads of downtown Chicago, broadcasting an open signal so

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geol ...

will work properly. Following an integration of its technology with

Google Assistant Google Assistant is a virtual assistant software application developed by Google that is primarily available on home automation and mobile devices. Based on artificial intelligence, Google Assistant can engage in two-way conversations, unlike ...

and

Hertz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or Cycle per second, cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in ter ...

rental cars, SpotHero announced that it had readied 500 parking facilities in Chicago for driverless cars. In March 2019, SpotHero partnered with transit app

Moovit Moovit () is an Israel-based mobility as a service provider and journey planner app. It is owned by Mobileye and was acquired by Intel in 2020 until Mobileye's IPO in 2022. Moovit uses both crowdsourced and official public transit data to provi ...

to offer drivers the chance to view and book off-street parking near transit stations in San Francisco, to help ease road congestion in the Bay Area. In June 2019, it was reported that SpotHero was partnering with

Waze Waze Mobile Ltd, (; ) doing business as Waze (), formerly FreeMap Israel, is a subsidiary company of Google that provides satellite navigation software on smartphones and other computers that support the Global Positioning System (GPS). In ad ...

, a GPS navigation software app owned by

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, to link their navigation and parking into a unified user experience. In early 2020, the company launched SpotHero IQ, a

dynamic pricing Dynamic pricing, also referred to as surge pricing, demand pricing, or time-based pricing, and variable pricing, is a revenue management pricing strategy in which businesses set flexible prices for products or services based on current market de ...

product allowing operators of parking garages or lots to adjust prices based on real-time data.

Acquisitions

In April 2015, SpotHero acquired San Francisco-based peer-to-peer parking marketplace ParkPlease. In April 2017, SpotHero acquired Parking Panda, a Baltimore-based services and event parking company.Amina Elahi
"SpotHero buys Baltimore-based competitor Parking Panda,"
''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...

'', April 13, 2017.Kristen Hall-Geisler
"SpotHero acquires Parking Panda,"
TechCrunch, April 13, 2017. The acquisition expanded SpotHero into Canada, and brought the number of parking locations the company could reserve at to over 5,000. In November 2020, SpotHero acquired the Toronto-based app Rover Parking, helping the company access thousands more parking locations across Canada.

References

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External links