If you visited or lived in Israel, you know that parking in Tel Aviv can be a huge problem. Too many cars and too few spots. Two Israeli entrepreneurs in the 30s, Gev Rotem and Ilan Blum, are tackling the problem with their new startup, Parkpool (no website yet).
Parkpool’s solution is a marketplace approach. Businesses with parking lots are able to lease their parking spots at night when their offices are empty and personal parking spots owners who drive to work are able to lease their spots during the day. The booking is made through a smart phone app backed by a call center, where drivers seeking parking can call to reserve a spot near their location. With an average of 30 minutes search time for a spot and parking fines ranging from $30 to $300, some certainty in planning adds a lot of value and saves gas as well as emissions.
ParkPool is joining a growing trend of “Collaborative Consumption” – the rapid growth in swapping, sharing, bartering, trading and renting through peer-to-peer marketplaces. Examples include rental and swapping of clothing, books, bikes, cars, apartments and now, also parking spots.
In the future, Parkpool wants to take the model global, to congested cities in the US and Europe.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
