JustPark CEO Jeff Shanahan on Making Parking Experiences Frictionless and Integrating a Global Business

Whether it’s a fan paying a premier price for a premier ticket, or a family heading into the city on the weekend, parking is a critical part of the experience. Drivers want to secure a spot ahead of time and easily make their way into the lot, garage or private driveway with minimal friction. But delivering that seamless entry and exit is a complex task, often spanning multiple technology providers. 

That’s the challenge JustPark solves for over 500 U.S. customers, like the Pittsburgh Steelers, Dallas Cowboys, University of Notre Dame and city of Boulder, as well as 14 million drivers in the U.K. As parking shifts from cash to digital payments, JustPark’s integrated software reduces friction for customers, while giving operators more transparency into operations. 

Alongside a strategic growth investment from FTV Capital in 2024, ParkHub, a leading provider of parking management software and payments solutions in North America, and JustPark, the top app-based parking reservations technology and payments platform in the U.K., combined to form what was initially called ParkHub but recently rebranded to become JustPark.

The revamped JustPark platform covers the full breadth of parking operations, from back-office tasks like revenue tracking to consumer-facing operations, including providing the actual digital pass that drivers need to scan their way into parking. It’s a powerful tool to help media and entertainment providers meet the high expectations fans have for the on-site experience, as well as help drivers get their vehicles parked as quickly and easily as possible. 

FTV’s investment marks the second time we have worked with JustPark CEO Jeff Shanahan, who previously ran, took public and sold CardConnect, an FTV portfolio company. We spoke with Jeff about his journey from ParkHub investor to JustPark CEO, the complexities of managing parking operations, why he boomeranged back to FTV, and the lessons learned from blending two distinct cultures to build one international company. 

QUESTION 1

What drew you to the opportunity to join ParkHub, now JustPark, as full-time CEO in October 2023? 

I was an investor in ParkHub first. What struck me was that no companies in the U.S. were really focused on event parking. Now powering $1 billion in booking volume, ParkHub had really cornered the market, and had some of the biggest professional sports teams, largest universities and most popular music venues in the world as customers. ParkHub even worked with my hometown team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. 

For these organizations, parking is critical. If things don’t run smoothly, it can cause tremendous issues. These are premium brands, needing to deliver a top-tier experience to fans, so making sure people can get in and out of an event smoothly is vital. I also found ParkHub’s business model interesting – a SaaS offering that also monetized payments, which is an area where I felt I could lend a lot of expertise from my time at CardConnect. 

QUESTION 2

What made you want to work with FTV a second time? 

Simple – I had a great experience working with FTV previously. At CardConnect, when my former co-founders and I first met with FTV in early 2010, we immediately cancelled the typical investment banking process we had underway because we liked the FTV team so much. They were people we could connect with and trust and were just different from other private equity firms. 

And we had a great run with FTV resulting in a very successful exit. So when ParkHub (now JustPark) needed capital, partnering with FTV was the obvious decision – I just had to make sure they were interested! 

Founders and small businesses are often paranoid of losing control and bringing on an investor they may regret down the road. But that isn’t FTV’s style. They are collaborative and friendly, and just do things differently.  

QUESTION 3

Why did you acquire JustPark?

Before the acquisition, ParkHub made most of its money selling software subscriptions to merchants. One of our biggest selling points was that we could integrate with a lot of pre-paid reservations systems, which saved a lot of time, energy and costs for our customers. But we realized we could do even more if we provided our own digital parking pass, available natively in our platform. It meant one less vendor the customer had to manage, and one less technology solution to deal with. 

We started to build the offering ourselves, but then we met with JustPark. For too many people, parking has become so unnecessarily complicated. What JustPark has done in the U.K. to simplify that process for 14 million drivers is outstanding. Everything – from paying for the spot advance to then getting to it – can be seamlessly handled on a mobile device. We were so impressed by their operation that we shelved our work and decided to partner to bring JustPark’s technology to the U.S. 

Now, we can offer clients an integrated platform to manage the breadth of parking operations, from back-office to consumer-facing, which has become a huge revenue driver for us and for customers in both the U.S. and the U.K. 

QUESTION 4

What excites you about the market opportunity for JustPark? 

The longer I worked with the company, the more I saw the opportunity in parking technology. In general, the technology industry across almost every vertical is saturated with tons of vendors. But parking is forgotten – it’s seen as almost more of a utility. So it’s a really unique niche to play in and differentiate through technology.

Most people want to know they have a parking spot before they arrive somewhere instead of figuring it out on the spot. Making that work means integrating with a lot of different prepaid reservations systems. After combining ParkHub and JustPark, we’re now the only unified provider of everything customers need to run their parking operations. That opens up a lot of opportunities to help improve the experience for both fans at ticketed events, as well as help media and entertainment providers run better, more efficient operations. At the same time, we’re delivering on-demand parking solutions for individuals navigating routine parking needs, which is a key revenue driver and critical to our continued growth.

QUESTION 5

What was it like blending the cultures of a Dallas-based company, with one based in London? 

JustPark is the largest parking reservation provider in the U.K with a really well-established brand. We wanted to preserve as much of that as possible, while merging everything together under one banner – one tech team in the U.S. and U.K., and the same with product, marketing, operations, etc. But that’s really hard when the companies are separated by an ocean with different cultures.

It was important to retain the great talent from JustPark and have them immediately feel like part of the new company. So we did an offsite together in Portugal – something they used to do before the pandemic. We also do an annual hackathon, where the whole tech team meets up at an off-site destination to work on ongoing projects and new initiatives, which had tremendous results. And we travel a lot between offices. It also helps tremendously with recruiting to have our headquarters in Dallas and London. Our whole management team is now completely different – a blend of individuals from JustPark, ParkHub and outside hires.

I figure, if we can successfully scale our tech platform across both the U.S. and the U.K., there’s no reason we can’t go to other geographies, like the E.U., or even Australia. Our new partnership with the University of Hawai’i is a great example of how JustPark can work with institutions around the world.