Blog

We are opening up our platform to hard working, passionate people that want to share in the huge potential of this business. You have something we want (time and passion) and we have something you want (an opportunity to profit from the rapidly growing P2P market).

Park Circa is focused on micro-sharing excess capacity of parking spaces. But people (like you) also have excess capacity in their random daily schedule, e.g. students, the temporarily unemployed, stay-at-home moms, etc. We want to build a community of people that see the huge potential of P2P parking and want to profit from this new idea.

Here's the Idea and what we'll provide:

• Training and Material. Everything you need to talk to neighbors in your city and sign them up as parking hosts.
• Guidance and Tips. Suggestions of where to focus your energy for highest profitability and quickest launch.
• Dashboard. Track all the people that you sign up, usage activity, profit reports, etc.
• Rewards and Recognition. Immediate cash rewards and ranks for reaching important milestones.
• Lots of Money. We'll share our profit with you. Do the work once and keep earning money, month after month. Your part time job won't do that!

Let us know if you are interested in helping us launch this program.

Before I give an update, I want to remind you of our vision. Long term, Park Circa is working to create a private network of micro-shared spaces where members can use our app to easily find parking anywhere in the city for the same price as a single space in a single location. This is accomplished by optimizing the usage of each space, and creating a market for all that unused time.

The idea is more exciting today, than it was a year ago when we did our soft beta launch. So why haven't we succeeded yet? Well, we're doing our best, but we are only human. We are working hard to move this idea forward, but after a lot of initial interest, we never secured much needed funding to allow us to devote ourselves full time to building this business. So we had to transition to a more long term strategy where we continue to work on this idea nights and weekends, with volunteers that share our passion for sharing.

Maybe others could have done a better job, but we are what we are, just a few people with limited skills and resources, and a great idea that we are crazy enough to think will change society.

We've built a tool, but the ultimate success of this idea depends on whether people  want to use this tool to better their own lives. Neighbors are already sharing their spaces with one another in an informal way, but Park Circa allows this process to be streamlined, for the circle of trust to be extended, and for the owner to benefit financially.

This is an exciting market space, and we all sense that it has huge potential to remake industries. But being on the cutting edge is tough. It has more risks than most people are comfortable with, so it's a challenge to bring all the pieces together, particularly when you don't have any external resources. Initially when we launched we thought the idea might go viral on it's own, so we went for a shotgun approach. Thousands of people signed up but we didn't get enough density in a concentrated location and we didn't have the resources to sustain this approach.

So now we are regrouping, rebuilding a core team of co-founders, and then we'll be relaunching with a neighborhood specific focus. Fortunately the idea of sharing your parking space when it's empty, sparks people's imagination. It is intuitive. It is obviously beneficial to both parties and people instantly understand it. We just have to get the word out.

With our current humble position, that means getting hyper local, finding neighborhood heroes that spread the word because they want to both share their space and park in other's space throughout the city. Together with local heroes we can build up a community of people that help each other in new ways, enabled by technology that handles passive communication/coordination and transactions.

***

So if you believe in this idea, please join us. We need local heros to spread the word. List your space and once we build up enough spaces in your neighborhood, we'll launch in your neighborhood and make sure that your space is used by desperate drivers. If you want to help us build this business as a co-founder, let us know what skills and other resources you can bring to the team.

Onward and upward.

The Occupy Wallstreet movement has shown it has staying power as it goes into it's 51st day of protests, and continues to attract new attention as it spreads across America and sparks offshoot movements like the recent thrust to invest in local community credit unions. Whatever your view of the demonstrations of civil disobedience, #OWS has established itself as a grassroots movement of average Americans who are uniting together to work for what they believe is important change.

Although our ambitions are not as lofty, we'd like to think that we at Park Circa are also working to unite neighbors from local communities in a spirit of solidarity and sharing. Times are tough right now, money is short, it just makes sense to share resources that are unused or under utilized. For too long we have put up barriers between ourselves and our neighbors, and that distance has led to suspicion and disharmony in the community. It's time to meet your neighbors again, share a cup of sugar, bring them cookies, host a block party, give them a ride, or share your parking space.

Go ahead, tell your neighbors to, "Occupy My Space".

#OMS

Feedback Needed

How to Crack an Egg Before the Chicken Lays It

So what are we doing now?

There's so much work to be done, and not enough time in the day. We have a lot of great ideas, but we need help accomplishing them all. Do you believe in neighborhood sharing? Do you believe people would like to find parking easier? Do you believe we can make the city a better place to live if we can get people out of their cars quicker and out into life?

If you have time to be community volunteeer or a paid neighborhood advocate, or you have skills in web development or mobile app development, we need you to join our team.

See our Help Wanted section for details.

We've added Check-In Notifications for parking space owners to receive an instant notification via email or SMS alert whenever someone checks in and out of their space. An owner can also go to his/her website dashboard to learn more about the transaction. Notifications also give drivers the peace of mind to know that the owner is aware of the transaction.

The notification will look like this:

Check-In Notification

Check-Out Notification

To turn on Notifications, simply go to your Account Info and add your email or phone number (in SMS email format) to the "SMS Notification Email" field. You can click the "Send Test Notification" link to confirm that you've entered a working email.

If you start getting too many notification and don't want to be notified anymore, you can simply remove your email from this field.

If you wish to receive these notifications on your phone (rather than email), you can enter your phone number followed by the correct SMS Gateway for your mobile phone service provider, e.g. 5551112222@txt.att.net

Below are a few common gateways. You can view a fuller list if your provider is not listed below.

Format for Common Carriers

• AT&T: @txt.att.net
• Verizon: @vtext.com
• Sprint: @messaging.sprintpcs.com
• T-Mobile @tmomail.net
• Alltel: @message.alltel.com

We are continuing to add more P2P inventory on our map, and hopefully this will increase as we reach the next phase of our plan for spreading the word to neighbors. But as we continue to focus on building up P2P inventory, we want to make our app as useful as possible to drivers, even in neighborhoods where we don't have a lot of P2P spaces yet. So we are in the process of encouraging businesses, non-profits, and government facilities to list their under-utilized parking spaces during or after hours (e.g. the elementary school lot or the grocery store parking lot after hours). We're also encouraging traditional parking facilities (e.g. garages, lots, valet, etc) to take ownership of their own listings and manage pricing, inventory, and specials.

These types of commercial parking spaces require different controls than residential peer-to-peer spaces, so we are now providing additional management tools for commercial accounts, so they can control unique variable pricing (common for garages), live inventory counts, etc.

Businesses that list a space can add their own logo to their public profile and we'll display the logo on the parking space (this can be a great way for the business to get a little bit of good PR for their goodwill effort of sharing with the community).

We'll  be developing analytics for businesses that manage a lot of spaces, to help them make better business decisions about usage, pricing, demand, etc. And in conjunction with this, we'll be offering promotional opportunities for parking facilities to offer drivers special prices based on driver location, search patterns, etc.

We hope that the end results of all this will be that drivers get the best parking options available, and neighbors that share their P2P parking will get more usage of their space because more people are using the app.

Per SF Gate’s Inside Scoop via SFist, Willie Brown paid a visit to the new Locanda Restaurant, a Delfina spinoff in the parking limited Mission District. The former mayor pointedly states at the outset, "I can best describe it as one of the few restaurants in the Mission you can actually get into, because they have valet parking." (emphasis added)

Say what you may about Willie and his politics, but his endorsement of valet parking is something we encourage. Being able to arrive at your destination efficiently, either by reserving a space through Park Circa, going to a garage or dropping it off with a valet (both available on Park Circa’s app), helps you avoid circling to find parking. It’s also a great way to avoid parking headaches and reduce congestion and pollution.

Park Circa now displays all available parking types including valet. We already have 10 valet service listed in North Beach. These include valet services for restaurants like Albona Restaurant, COI Restaurant, Cotogna, Fior D’Italia, Maykadeh, North Beach Cafe, and Rose Pistola.

So Mr. Brown, when you want to eat out at a restaurant and be sure it has valet parking, check out the Park Circa web site.

We have decided to supplement the Peer-to-Peer parking available on our app with alternative parking options (e.g. garages, valet, etc), so that the mobile app is more useful to drivers. We are testing this out in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood to start with, so you'll notice a lot of extra parking options in that neighborhood. We've added unique icons to help you differentiate the various types of parking, in case you prefer one over the other. An updated version of the app will be released soon with the extra options.

For right now, parking garages/lots and valet services are promoted on the app, but reservations and payment will be made with each respective company (not yet through our app). But the information is still useful, since it allows you to see all the parking options available to you (even if it's around the corner and you can't see it with your eyes). We provide the hours and rates as well, so you don't have to pull into the garage before realizing how expensive it is. Hopefully this makes the driving/parking experience a little easier. We'll continue to find ways to improve this for you, so your feedback is much appreciated.

We still want to focus on Peer-to-Peer parking, because its such an exciting opportunity to help people use our urban resources more efficiently and monetize valuable assets that are just sitting idly most of the day. However, we currently have a lot of P2P parking that isn't being fully utilized, because people don't realize it's there (last time they checked the app there weren't many spaces). So our goal is to make our app as useful as possible for drivers (by giving all the parking options possible) and then once more people start using the Park Circa app, some people will choose to park in P2P spaces because they are closer, cheaper and available. This will hopefully increase the P2P usage and that will legitimize P2P as a viable option in people's minds, which in turn will encourage more people to list their P2P space.

A lot of people wanted to share their space on Park Circa, but couldn't because they had a parking space in a secure access parking garage. When we first launched the app could only facilitate parking for publicly accessible spaces, since the driver needed to be able to park without manual coordination with the parking space owner, i.e. they wanted to park right now.

However, we've now added the ability for sharing your space on a monthly basis. This can take several forms: Dedicated Monthly Leasing or Monthly Micro-Shared.

Dedicated Monthly Leasing

If you don't need your space for yourself, then you probably want to do a traditional lease of your parking space to one other person. Most people currently list their space on Craigslist. This "works" because there are no better option, but craigslist is a pain to manage your ad, you can't keep the same ad and have to keep adding it again, and you can't just toggle it on/off when you require a new renter. And as much as we love craigslist, we all know the interface is not user friendly. There is no easy way for the prospective renter to find all spaces nearby with a convenient map view. And since there is no standardized method of listing a space, Craigslist is a free for all, and you can't easily filter out exactly what you are looking for.

If you want to keep listing your space on craigslist, you can do that, but we encourage you to also list your space on Park Circa, because it's a streamlined, dedicated Parking Marketplace. There is no costs and we will be introducing ratings and communication options, as well as analytics and other features that are useful to both drivers and owners. If you list your space, you can mark it as "rented" and that will take it off the market for the time being but allow you to still be gathering leads from interested parties for when it next becomes available. And when you need to find a new tenant, you can mark it as active again and follow up with anyone that is waiting for it to open up.

Monthly Micro-Share

This is where the power of sharing becomes interesting. If you need to continue using your parking space you can still potentially find someone to share your space when you aren't using it. If you have a single space (e.g. a parking garage numbered space) you can set a schedule that allows someone to rent your space Monday-Friday 8-5pm for a flat monthly fee. This would be ideal for someone that works in your neighborhood, and it would help subsidize your own costs (making money on your parking space when it's sitting idle).

Alternatively, if you own a single family home, with a garage and a driveway (or curbcut), you could share with one other person in a traditional "Tandem" arrangement. You can continue parking in your garage, while another monthly renter parks in your driveway or curbcut. They can share their key with you, so that if there is ever an overlap of schedules, you can move their car. For those that don't mind a little inconvenience, this can be a great way to help a neighbor and subsidize your own costs.

We continue to work on new features and options for parking space owners and drivers. Most recently we've added flat rate pricing for parking spaces. This is great news for spaces listed for events (e.g. concerts, festivals, parades, etc) and popular night time destinations (e.g. North Beach, Hayes Valley, Mission, etc), or for those who just want to set a daily rate for all day.

You can also mix and match hourly with flat rates. So when you edit your parking space schedule you can set hourly for certain days or times of day, and flat rates for evenings or overnight parking.

We hope this gives everyone more desirable options. Different neighborhoods have different needs and hopefully the local market will figure out what works best. We can give recommendations if you need more insider information. For example, during the day in North Beach, there is a huge need for short term parking, so hourly is ideal. But at night, people want long term parking, so flat rate is better.

We reached an important milestone today: 1000 people have joined Park Circa as private beta testers. We're still a tiny startup, with no outside funding for marketing or team members outside of our two co-founders and a couple part time volunteers, so that's an exciting number for us. 75% of our members come directly to our site (not linked from other sites), which means that most people are hearing about Park Circa from friends, or our flyers.

We're really grateful for all of you that believe in this idea and are willing to help us make it work. We know it's slow going, but that's the nature of trying something new; it takes a while to figure out what works, get the word out ,and get people to adopt new patterns of behavior.

We are working on a several tests right now, to see if we can build up enough inventory in specific areas so that the App is useful enough for our members to use on a daily basis. But of course we welcome everyone to share their spaces everywhere. We already have quite a few great parking spots around San Francisco that we have been using ourselves when we go out. They are like secret spots that no one knows about right now, which is a neat feeling.

Next time you go out, be sure to check if there is a Park Circa space nearby!

This photo was taken yesterday at the Stern Grove Music Festival. This car tried to squeeze into a small space in front of my car and ended up parking partially on the grass of the Park. The DPT was out in force and we saw a lot of tickets on windshields.

Next time, maybe they'll consider using Park Circa. There was a great parking space only 100 feet away from this car, which they could have used... would have been much much cheaper.

As one of our event tests, we've been recruiting neighbors to share their driveways around the Sigmund Stern Grove for the Stern Grove Music Festival, a free event that runs every Sunday all summer long.

During normal days, there is an overabundance of parking in the neighborhoods surrounding the Grove. But on Sundays, when 10,000 people stream to hear the music and enjoy the beautiful eucalyptus grove, the streets are filled up for a half a mile away (and more when it's a popular concert).

We've talked to numerous neighbors that love the festival and many of them want to help out others that are coming to the concerts. So they've enthusiastically joined Park Circa and shared their driveways.

So the next time you want to go to Stern Grove, and don't want to arrive 4 hours before the Concert, or walk a long distance with your picnic, consider using one of the neighbor's driveways. Many of the neighbors are even donating the proceeds back to the Stern Grove Association, so it goes to a good cause.

We've been working on implementing all the great suggestions we've received from you and are happy to announce that you can now upload photos for your parking space. This is now live on the website, and will be available in the next update for iPhone and Android as soon as they are approved.

Having a photo will greatly improve drivers' ability to find your house and reassure them that they are indeed parked in the correct space. This will make it more likely that people will use your space.

We have added a few photos already, but not all spaces have photos yet. We recommend you upload a photo immediately. We recommend taking photos that show enough of your house and driveway (or whatever other context is helpful) so that drivers can know know where to park.