People are making cash on Airbnb by renting out their rooms. They’re lending their cars to strangers for some extra dough through Turo. Now Mark Abramowicz and Braden Golub are giving people yet another way to profit from stuff they’re not using at the moment.
Abramowicz and Golub are the co-founders of Spot, an app that lets people rent out their unused parking spots. It’s already up and running in Boston, where they live and work, and boasts just under 15,000 users.
“We’re bringing an underutilized asset to the public market,” says Golub. “All cities want more people coming in, as well as more tax dollars.”
By mid-July, the co-founders said they plan to launch Spot in Chicago, and, by the end of the year, they’re aiming to be in other major markets like Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Miami, and Washington, D.C. According to their website, Spot owners can make hundreds of dollars per month on their space.
Golub thought of the idea for the app after noticing the parking situation in his own neighborhood.
“One night I was coming back from my girlfriend’s place a half a mile away from my house,” he says. “I walked past my parking lot and saw that 10 out of 25 spots were empty. I was thinking that I could put my girlfriend’s car in one of those spots and I could pay the owner. That was my aha moment.”
Since they started developing the app, Abramowicz and Golub have been tweaking it based on feedback from their users.
“These early users are our bread and butter, says Golub. “We’re engaged with them on a daily basis. We ask them what they like or don’t like about Spot. We’re a small company and we can react pretty quickly.”
Right now the two are looking into insurance that would protect users in case their property was somehow damaged. They also have a process of verifying each user and spot owner and can retrieve details about a renter’s car.
Above all, they’re hoping to contribute to this new economic ecosystem and provide their users with another avenue for revenue.
“It’s about putting the power of this sharing economy into the mainstream hands,” says Braden. “We think that’s very valuable.”