Peer-To-Peer Parking Marketplace Spacer Acquires “Competitor” Roost
The Australia-based peer-to-peer parking (and space rental) marketplace firm Spacer has acquired the US-based peer-to-peer parking marketplace firm Roost, according to recent reports.
They were not quite competitors, but perhaps eventually the two would have been, presuming strong growth — both of the firms (which are now one) offer those in crowded urban areas the ability to rent out their parking spots to those who need them.
In other words, the service is somewhat like Uber (or Lyft), Homeaway (or Airbnb), etc. — another way that expensive legacy providers can be circumvented and those with services or spaces to offer for purchase/rent can do so directly via an app.
Tech Crunch provides more: “It’s a move that lets Spacer make its entry into the US market without having to establish its own office and start from scratch. The deal will include rebranding all of Roost’s existing US service offerings under the Spacer name, and Roost CEO Jonathan Gillon will also be departing the company to focus on building new companies as part of the deal. The plan is to expand Roost’s US operations to SF, Chicago, and Washington, DC, as Spacer’s initial US market entry, before expanding across the entire country.”
Notably, the deal also includes the transfer of Roost’s existing partnerships with Enterprise, Zipcar, and Maven Drive — useful partnerships, no doubt.
Going by speculation that I’ve read elsewhere, it seems that Spacer may be anticipating the rapid growth of its service in conjunction with the possible rapid growth of self-driving vehicles over the coming decade. Whether or not this would prove to be the case in actuality would of course depend greatly on the way that self-driving vehicle tech ends up getting rolled out. If most of the self- driving vehicles out there are simply on-demand taxi fleets that charge at a central depot, then I’m not sure how Spacer would benefit.
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