With many looking for socially distanced outdoor activities during the pandemic, ParkHub is making a new acquisition.
In an all-Dallas deal, the parking management software startup scooped up Bonfire, a campground management and reservation platform. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“What we are seeing now — and will likely witness even more in the future — is an overlapping of agendas across industries, which opens up an opportunity for consolidation and mutual growth,” said Jerry King, CEO of Bonfire, in a statement.
As part of the deal, King will join ParkHub as president of the Bonfire business unit.
ParkHub is a longtime player in the DFW tech ecosystem, founded in 2010 by CEO George Baker. Over the past year, the company has landed a number of partnerships to roll out its software and hardware at venues across the country, including AT&T Stadium in Arlington. It also found its way onto the 2020 Inc. 5000 list in the No. 1,218 spot, reporting three-year revenue growth of nearly 370 percent. ParkHub also secured $15 million in new funding last year, bringing its total to more than $30 million.
Bonfire was launched in 2013, initially going by the name RVSpotfinder.com. The company, whose platform streamlines the booking process at state and national parks, as well as private campgrounds and RV parks, raised $60,000 in equity funding that year from 10 investors. It followed that in 2015 with a $500,000 investment from Jason Story, who currently serves as the co-founder and VP of business development for disease management startup ReturnSafe and as a board member for Dallas’ Gig Wage.
While the acquisition marks a new vertical for ParkHub, which had about 65 employees in May of last year, Baker said the though the two companies’ end-users are different, the platforms and goals of the two are largely similar.
“Along our journey as a company, we've deployed ParkHub's platform and resources to handle numerous use cases. In doing so, we realized our flexibility transcends the realm of parking,” Baker said in a statement.
