Curtis Lee never expected to have a career in parking. But after a stressful night circling the block around his favorite San Francisco restaurant for more than 30 minutes and finally finding a spot almost half a mile away where he had to endure the honking of impatient drivers as he parallel parked all the while living in fear of losing the dinner reservation that he had made two months in advance, he knew there had to be a better way.
When he and his wife finally sat down at their table at Nopa, he asked the waiter for a pen and on the back of a napkin sketched out the idea for Luxe Valet, a free app that offers on-demand valet parking and which officially launches today in San Francisco after six months in beta.
“Circling is not good for anybody,” says Mr. Lee, adding that in San Francisco it takes an average of 27 minutes to find parking. Find the wrong parking and you can join the 70,000 cars that were towed last year in San Francisco. So, 18 months ago Mr. Lee and his co-founder, Craig Martin, set out to make parking “a delight.”
“We’re a technology company first and foremost matching customers with valets,” says Mr. Lee, adding that the challenge is coordinating two moving targets – the customer and the valet – and limiting the wait time. We tried the app and it worked. We typed in our destination before leaving home and Josh, our valet, was there waiting by the time we arrived some 15 minutes later. We gave him the keys (Mr. Lee says the valets are trained and pre-screened), he offered to get the car washed and fill up the gas tank (for an extra charge) and off he went to one of their secure lots (no street parking).
An hour and a half later we tapped on ‘Return My Car’ and the app let us track the car as it made its return to the location of our choice. Users range from commuters dropping off their cars for the day (for a maximum charge of $15) to mothers taking kids with car seats to appointments and not wanting to deal with parking or putting the car seat in a taxi. Note, anyone can download the app, but there will be a waiting list to be sure the company can satisfy demand.
With $5.5 million in seed funding from investors including Google Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Sherpa Ventures and Lightspeed Ventures, the company now has 20 employees not including its valets and plans to expand to other major cities.
Read the interview with Mr. Lee in Forbes.com.
