It’s our birthday - or Parkday as we call it here.
This month, JustPark is turning 14 years old! A proper teenager, albeit one dedicated to making your (parking) lives easier. What better time to reflect back on how far we’ve come since our humble beginnings.
Back in 2006, JustPark’s founder and CEO Anthony had an idea when he passed loads of empty driveways while looking for parking in San Francisco - he wanted to make parking smarter and easier so in the future, space hunting, swearing under our breath and simply not finding parking would be a thing of the past. So he started to develop ParkAtMyHouse from, well, his house. Ok, fine, his bedroom actually.
After an investment secured from BMW iVentures in 2011, staff numbers went from 2 to 20, the parking network grew from lots of driveways to also include car parks, churches, hotels and businesses added AND - drum roll - JustPark was born in a 2014 rebrand.
Another investment round followed that same year, this time from Index Ventures. JustPark also worked with Mini to launch the first ever in-car parking app, hitting over 500,000 users! Impressive, right? Richard Branson agreed and so, in 2015, we won his #VOOM award - and had a record-breaking £3.7m crowdfunding round on the side. You know, baby steps and such.
The wild ride of course didn’t stop there, oh no: between 2015 and 2019, we built our mobile app, grew our community of drivers to over 4.5m, got local authorities (including Cornwall, Dundee and more) on board, redefined our vision and mission and leisurely bagged some awards as well, like British Parking Awards in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Now, with a team of over 100, we’re proud to say we’re the sole supplier for local parking in Northern Ireland, ran the very successful Park & Vote campaign in the 2019 General Election and worked with driveway owners near hospitals to provide sufficient and free parking for NHS staff & Critical Care Workers when COVID-19 hit in 2020.
Time to lean back, relax, have some cake? Absolutely...not. We have grand plans for at least the next 14 years!So stay tuned for our new products and ideas! Ok, fine, NOW we will have some cake. But we’ll be back shortly!Happy birthday to us!
