In our most recent real estate tech entrepreneur interview, we’re talking with Garret Flower from ParkOffice.
Who are you and what do you do?
My identify is Garret Flower, I’m the co-founder and CEO of ParkOffice – the parking software program for wise places of work. I have been an entrepreneur for practically as lengthy as I can remember. I commenced my first small business at fifteen and have progressively been obtaining a lot more and a lot more bold at any time because.
At the moment I split my time between New York City and Dublin exactly where I’m taking care of the rapid growth of ParkOffice in the two Europe and the US. We commenced out a couple of a long time ago with ParkOffice with a really very simple idea – worker parking was broken and we wished to deal with it.
Our progress in this kind of a small place of time has been really energising, we’ve created an sector foremost item which is trusted by six Fortune 500s and a great number of SMEs in thirteen international locations across the globe.
What trouble does your item/service solve?
Business parking is dysfunctional on so a lot of amounts.
The conclude practical experience is normally extremely annoying as workforce arrive at places of work to locate parking plenty unexpectedly total or worse, they pay back for parking off-web site and stroll to the workplace by way of a 50 %-empty auto park.
The management practical experience isn’t a great deal improved, amenities administrators normally complain that taking care of parking is the most time intensive part of their occupation and that no make any difference how tough you attempt you will still be inundated with grievances from disgruntled workforce.
From a local community perspective, according to study from UCLA, every time someone sits into a auto and does not know if they have a place at get the job done or not, they will shell out an more 800m cruising at their destination on the lookout for someplace to park. This leads to enormous site visitors problems in neighbourhoods close to massive places of work.
ParkOffice offers a thoroughly automated solution which lets providers to solve all these difficulties though also minimizing expenditures and carbon emissions in the method.
What are you most enthusiastic about correct now?
When you search at the figures there is practically as a great deal place in the United states of america committed to workplace parking as there is to workplace buildings. Nevertheless, in most conditions, it is a massively below-used piece of real estate.
The ordinary corporation who believes they don’t have more than enough parking place actually have up to forty% of their parking areas empty throughout the operating working day. This is normally brought on by folks operating from household, being off-web site at conferences or being on vacations. What a squander of place and revenue.
In a environment exactly where our metropolitan areas are working out of place, I’m extremely enthusiastic about how technology can be made use of to park automobiles a lot more properly, freeing up complete swathes of place for metropolitan areas across the environment to expand.
We have just adapted our item to tackle the problems encompassing COVID-19. Above recent a long time our important target has been on supporting providers to minimize their workforce auto dependency.
With COVID-19 switching the small business atmosphere for providers all in excess of the environment, we understood we experienced to innovate to thrive. By altering our item somewhat we can now aid providers return to the workplace safely faster. With community transport a no-go region for a lot of folks who are fearful about the virus, worker parking is heading to be below increased strain than at any time. Our automated solution can check parking availability in real-time and assign areas to these in most need to have – assume of it like incredibly hot-desking but for parking areas. The magnificence is that we can boost parking availability by up to forty% for providers.
What is upcoming for you?
The United states of america is a enormous target for us – we’ve been blessed to decide up a few massive customers in excess of there but we’re opening up a total-time workplace in excess of there in the upcoming six months to accelerate our growth.
What is a cause you are passionate about and why?
Racism really angers me. I feel strongly that all folks were made equivalent, and this environment is regrettably structured in a way which shortcomings swathes of folks since of their gender and race. As 50 %-American, 50 %-Irish, I’m acutely informed of the shortcomings a lot of of my ancestors experienced to overcome to lay the foundations for me to thrive. I’m normally on the lookout for techniques in which I can pave a path for minorities to lay the way for their communities to flourish. It is my occupation as a CEO and a chief of ParkOffice to stimulate an atmosphere of inclusion to learn how to apply procedures that will correct this inequality.
Many thanks to Garret for sharing his tale. If you’d like to join, find him on LinkedIn listed here.
We’re continuously on the lookout for wonderful real estate tech entrepreneurs to element. If that is you, please read this post — then drop me a line (drew @ geekestatelabs dot com).