SpotHero

SpotHero was founded by Mark Lawrence and Jeremy Smith in Chicago in 2011, with co-founder Larry Kiss joining the company soon after.[3][4] 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.[5][6]

In December 2012, SpotHero raised $2.5 million in venture capital funds from Battery Ventures (lead), 500 Startups, Bullet Time, e.Ventures, OCA Ventures, New World Ventures, Lightbank, and Draper Associates; at the time, it only served Milwaukee and Chicago.[7][8] In June 2014, SpotHero raised an additional $4.5 million in funding and announced new board of directors members, including LinkedIn's Mike Gamson, Match.com's Sam Yagan, and venture capitalist Sam Guren.[9] The company raised $20 million in Series B funding in 2015,[10] and an additional $30 million in a Series C round in July 2017.[11] In September 2018, the company raised an additional $10 million, bringing its total raised since launching to $68 million.[12] 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.[13]

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.[3][14] By August 2015, SpotHero serviced 5 additional cities: Denver, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.[15][16] In July 2016, the company expanded to Los Angeles,[17] and in January 2017 added 13 additional cities, including Austin, Indianapolis, Miami and San Diego.[18] In 2020, the company was recognized as the fifteenth-largest privately held consumer marketplace.[19] As of November 2020, the company services over 300 cities in North America with a network of over 7,000 garages.[20]

SpotHero for Business was launched in March 2017, as a business-focused service with features and tools for paying, managing and organizing parking expenses.[21] The company also launched a free developer platform to help businesses integrate parking reservations into their existing apps.[22] 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.[23]

In 2018, SpotHero was named to Time magazine's inaugural list of 50 Genius Companies that are inventing the future.[24][25] 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."[24] That year, SpotHero purchased 500 Waze beacons for $15,000 and gave them to the Chicago Department of Transportation to install in the lower roads of downtown Chicago, broadcasting an open signal so GPS will work properly.[26][27] Following an integration of its technology with Google Assistant and Hertz rental cars, SpotHero announced that it had readied 500 parking facilities in Chicago for driverless cars.[28][29]

In March 2019, SpotHero partnered with transit app Moovit 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.[30][31] In June 2019, it was reported that SpotHero was partnering with Waze, a GPS navigation software app owned by Google, to link their navigation and parking into a unified user experience.[32]

In early 2020, the company launched SpotHero IQ, a dynamic pricing product allowing operators of parking garages or lots to adjust prices based on real-time data.[33]