Parking Panda was an online parking service that allowed drivers to find and reserve parking in advance. In addition to providing drivers with mobile and web applications to find parking, they also helped parking garage owners manage their inventory. Parking Panda was headquartered in

Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

. In April 2017,

SpotHero SpotHero is a digital parking marketplace that connects drivers looking to reserve and pay for parking spaces with parking lots, parking garages and valet services. The company, which operates a mobile app and website as well as a parking developer ...

acquired Parking Panda. The acquisition expanded SpotHero into Canada, and brought the number of parking locations the combined company can reserve to over 5,000.Amina Elahi
"SpotHero buys Baltimore-based competitor Parking Panda,"
''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

'', April 13, 2017.Kristen Hall-Geisler
"SpotHero acquires Parking Panda,"
TechCrunch, April 13, 2017. Parking Panda maintained a separate reservation system and app for some time after that but the service was eventually sunsetted in favor of SpotHero.

History

Nick Miller and Adam Zilberbaum founded Parking Panda at the first Maryland

Startup Weekend A Startup Weekend (also known as Startupweekend or SW) is a 54-hour entrepreneurship educational competitive event, in which groups of participants form teams around ideas the Friday evening, and work during the weekend to develop a working prototy ...

in 2011. After taking first place at Maryland Startup Weekend, Miller and Zilberbaum were accepted into the inaugural ER Accelerator Summer 2011 program in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. During the program, they built out their first online and mobile platform that allows drivers to reserve daily parking. They later added monthly and event parking at private garages, lots and valets.

Services

Coupled with their online reservation platform, Parking Panda also provided a free iOS and Android mobile application, and a Windows desktop application. Parking Panda also provided a platform for owners to manage their parking operations.

Partnerships

In addition to partnering with garage owners, Parking Panda partnered with companies, events, and venues. Notable partnerships included

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

MLB.com MLB.com is the official site of Major League Baseball and is overseen by Major League Baseball Advanced Media, L.P. (a subsidiary of MLB). MLB.com is a source of baseball-related information, including baseball news, statistics, and sports column ...

, professional sports teams, the

Target Center Target Center is a multi-purpose arena located in Minneapolis that opened in 1990. It hosts major family shows, concerts, sporting events, graduations and private events. Target Corporation, founded and headquartered in Minneapolis since 1902, ...

, and the Verizon Center.

Media coverage

Parking Panda has been featured by major publications including the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', ''

Mashable Mashable is a digital media platform, news website and entertainment company founded by Pete Cashmore in 2005. History Mashable was founded by Pete Cashmore while living in Aberdeen, Scotland, in July 2005. Early iterations of the site were a ...

'', ''

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

'', and ''

Tech Crunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

''.

References

{{Reflist

External links

ParkingPanda.com
Companies based in Baltimore Online services American companies established in 2011 2011 establishments in Maryland Internet properties established in 2011 Transport companies established in 2011 2017 mergers and acquisitions Parking companies