Author: OurCrowd

Bloomberg Businessweek featured OurCrowd portfolio company Parko this week, putting into context the story of the rise of Israeli traffic and parking apps. Tomer Neuner conceived of the Parko app when he was hunting for a parking space in Tel Aviv, circling his neighborhood on a sweltering summer day. “I thought to myself, there’s got to be a way to make the search more efficient for everyone,” says Neuner, 30, who quit his job as a product manager at financial-technology company SuperDerivatives to develop the app. Parko learns users’ habits by tracking their phones and predicts when they’re about to vacate a spot, alerting other drivers in the area. Neuner launched the app in Israel earlier this year and is planning to expand overseas, including to San Francisco and Paris. Read more on Bloomberg Businessweek here. Parko raised $350,000 from OurCrowd investors in...

Fast Company called OurCrowd portfolio company Parko an Israeli startup “to watch” in the wake of Google’s gigantic $1B+ acquisition of Waze. Contributor Nadav Shemer describes Parko as among “the most innovative businesses likely to follow the crowdsourced mapping tool’s path to high-value exits.” “Recent studies show that city drivers spend at least 20 minutes on average searching for a parking spot. Parko has developed a crowdsourcing solution for parking in a similar vein to Waze’s solution for traffic: It connects motorists looking for a spot with others about to leave one, while its algorithm identifies parking spots without users needing to remove their phones from their pockets.” OurCrowd investors backed Parko with a $350,000 round in 2012. Read more on Fast Company’s site...