ParqEx
Deal: $1.27 million seed round
Investors: Venture Management Partners and Wisconsin Investment Partners, along with investment from startup accelerators Elmspring and gener8tor.
What they do: ParqEx allows parking owners to rent out their spaces to other drivers. Similar to the way Airbnb lets home owners rent out their places, ParqEx is a marketplace where people, organizations and businesses can make money off their unused parking. The startup has also developed an IoT solution called Access+, which allows renters and approved users to open any garage door or gate with a click of a button on their smart phones.
ParqEx is different from Chicago's other parking startups SpotHero and ParkWhiz in that it connect users to private parking spaces, rather than public lots and decks.
Other details: Launched in 2014, ParqEx recently took part in the Elmspring and gener8tor tech accelerators. After taking part in the Wisconsin-based gener8tor program, ParqEx announced plans to open an office in Milwaukee, its second location outside of Chicago.
The startup has been a hit with Chicago condo owners, and it saw a huge uptick in users around the Cubs home World Series games, where some spots were selling for upwards of $250.
“We’re not just building an app or a website,” ParqEx CEO Vivek Mehra said in a statement, "We’re creating an ecosystem to solve the urban parking problem by bringing communities together and allowing individuals, businesses, schools, churches, anyone with a parking spot to share their parking easily so that everyone wins."
