SpotHero, the digital parking leader, today announced $50 million in Series D funding led by Macquarie Capital, bringing SpotHero’s total funding to date to $118 million. Union Grove Venture Partners participated in the round, along with existing investors including Insight Venture Partners, Global Founders Capital, OCA Ventures, AutoTech Ventures and others. The new capital will be used to accelerate marketplace growth, expand the digital platform for the parking industry, strengthen partnerships with leading mobility companies, and deepen SpotHero’s technology stack to standardize and optimize access to parking throughout North America.
SpotHero is driving the digital transformation of the $20B off-street parking industry with hardware and software solutions aimed at drivers, parking operators and property owners, and mobility partners. The company offers the largest place to buy and sell parking in North America and has helped digitize nearly 7,000 parking facilities in the US and Canada. SpotHero’s consumer products help millions of drivers find, book and access parking, while the SpotHero developer platform and API powers parking at scale for fleets, connected cars, and urban mobility apps.
In the first half of 2019, SpotHero:
Reached half a billion dollars in all-time sales, the majority transacted within the past year. The company is now on pace to reach $1 billion all-time transactions within the next year;
Assembled a team of executives from Uber, Expedia, Groupon and Cars.com, and is planning to double product and engineering headcount to more than 100 in the next year;
Announced SpotHero for Fleets, an industry-first parking-as-a-service solution designed to support the car sharing economy and help accelerate the mobility industry’s eventual transition to autonomous vehicles;
Hit 900-plus distribution partnerships and integrations including everything from Google Assistant, for voice-enabled parking; Waze, for seamless in-app navigation to parking; Hertz and car2go for fleet parking; WeWork, for commuter parking; and Moovit, for multi-modal parking;
Rolled out SpotHero for Business to over 600 corporate travel and enterprise clients.
At the intersection of infrastructure, real estate and technology, parking remains an industry in transition. It is being redefined by three of the biggest trends affecting cities today: mobility, congestion, and sustainability. By 2050, 68% of the world’s population is projected to live in cities, where aging infrastructure is already being pushed to the brink. In response, policymakers are experimenting with immediate solutions to reduce traffic, including congestion pricing and curb redesign, designating dedicated curb space for multi-modal use such as bike lanes or pick up and drop off zones. This transformation of the curb is reducing the availability of on-street parking and beginning to push more drivers to off-street facilities. To accelerate and streamline this transition, SpotHero is bringing underutilized and often invisible parking spaces online, reducing the need to build even more new parking structures in crowded cities.
“By standardizing the way parking is bought and sold, we are introducing the same visibility into parking inventory that people expect from the airline or hospitality industries,” said Mark Lawrence, CEO and co-founder, SpotHero. “That’s a big win for drivers, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to modernize parking. Together with our network of more than 1,000 operator and platform partners, and our new and existing investors, we look forward to bringing this next phase of industry growth to life.”
“SpotHero is in position to transform the entire parking industry and has built a foundation to support the future of mobility for a long time to come, including the movement towards shared use and EV fleets,” said Lucas Joynt, Senior Vice President, Macquarie Capital. “SpotHero’s leadership position makes the company an attractive investment for Macquarie Capital as we continue to drive innovation at the intersection of infrastructure, real estate and technology. We look forward to supporting SpotHero as it scales to its next phase of growth.”
About SpotHero
SpotHero is the digital parking leader and the largest place to buy and sell parking in North America. Millions of drivers use SpotHero’s mobile apps and website to find, book and access off-street parking in 7,000 locations across 300 cities. Leading mobility companies use the SpotHero developer platform to power seamless parking at scale for fleets, connected cars, and urban mobility solutions. For more information, visit SpotHero.com.