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Parkifi's co-founders Ryan Sullivan and Rishi Malik
When Rishi Malik went to Denver for a meeting, he struggled to find a parking spot. He’s not alone. You’ve probably been late to a meeting because you’ve spent too long driving around looking for a parking spot.
In fact, “thirty percent of city traffic is caused by people looking for parking and people spend an average of 15 minutes just trying to find a parking spot and we think that’s kind of crazy,” said Malik.
Malik and co-founder Ryan Sullivan wondered if there was a market solution for the parking problem. They decided to tackle the issue for the parking operators first, not commuters, and started Parkifi.
High Tech Meets the Pavement
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Boulder-based Parkifi provides small sensors (pictured left) that physically monitor parking spots availability and gives parking operators real time data on their inventory. For operators, this streamlines the process and provides valuable real-time information that is otherwise difficult to get. Right now, operators must physically send staff members to check on the lots. “It’s literally a very manual process of somebody going out there and counting cars,” said Malik. But by the time their employee gets back to the office, things could have changed.
Their dashboard gives instant information that will allow their customers to use dynamic pricing. Operators can see which lots are full, and which ones are struggling to fill up, and change prices accordingly.
Parkifi is launching their sensors with the city of Boulder, but interest, and paying customers, is coming from as near as Denver and as far as Pittsburgh. The product combines a software component (their platform) with the physical software (the small monitoring device), which means rolling out to new parking lots, which means manufacturing new sensors. “We are just getting it out there as fast as we can,” said Malik.
Real World Problem
While Malik started Parkifi out of a frustration, the results could go beyond just profits and convenience. Wasted time driving leads to wasted fuel, wasted money and more pollution.
For the founding duos, who are both software engineers, starting their business meant learning a whole new one. Neither had experience in parking management and weren’t sure if operators would even care about real-time data.
But for the team as consumers, they knew there had to be a better solution. When looking from a technology side, Malik asked “Why is it that for me as a consumer, with all the advances in technology, the only thing I can do now that I couldn’t do a few years ago is pay with a credit card?”
Parkifi raised close to $1 million in seed funding after going through the accelerator program at Boomtown Boulder. The money will go towards expanding their team, building their sensors and improving the product.
After rolling out in Boulder, the company looks prime for expansion. Malik says they will continue to iterate on their product, taking feedback from customers on how to make it more valuable.
While Parkifi is dealing directly with parking operators and has no consumer product, they ultimately hope this helps drivers. “Our end goal is to make sure we solve this for consumers. So the faster, the happier parking operators are, the easier and the faster it becomes for consumers not to have to worry about parking, to where they can pull up an app on their phone and find out where an open parking space is,” said Malik. Eventually, Parkifi would like to see that kind of information integrated into Google or Apple. Siri – find me a parking space.
