Deal To Watch: The Uber Of Airport Parking

Summary

At the time of publication, November 7th, Valeet had raised $301K of $2M Max

The Valeet team has been selected as a “Deal To Watch” by KingsCrowd. This distinction is reserved for deals selected into the top 10-20% of our deal diligence funnel. If you have questions regarding our deal diligence and selection methodology please reach out to hello@kingscrowd.com

Problem

The global travel industry is estimated to be worth approximately $8 trillion. The entire travel experience has been designed around enhancing the customer’s experience, from start to finish of each trip. More and more travelers are going on trips with the goal being to experience something new, rather than just relax.

As these travelers care m ore about experiences, money is being poured into creating better and more exciting experiences than ever before for these travelers. Travelers want to have the most streamlined and convenient travel experience possible, meaning that the trip from their point of origin to their final destination needs to be made as easy as possible by the companies that they will choose to patronize for these trips.

More and more we are even seeing airports reconfigure terminals to focus on premium experiences including high end food and dining experiences. With this emphasis on serving the approximately 8 million people flying each day it’s surprising that no one has tried to improve the airport arrival experience just yet.

Unfortunately, for many, getting to and from the airport is not a simple or painless task. Getting a car service is expensive, public transit can be unreliable, and parking is often a nightmare. Often it involves satellite lots and long shuttle wait times that can make the travel experience painful, expensive and nerve wrecking.

Put simply, it’s wasted time and money. As of now there is no way to drive to your gate and just leave your car similar to showing up to a fine dining restaurant that offers valet. But wouldn’t that be the type of frictionless experience that would make air travel more enjoyable and less stressful? Valeet thinks so.

Solution

Valeet aims to serve as a valet service at the gates of airports throughout the world. Before you leave for your trip, you can use Valeet’s IOS or Android apps to book a valet for your car. Then, a driver will be waiting when you arrive at the airport to take your car and securely park it.

When you return from your trip your car will be waiting for you, curbside ready to go. This eliminates the need for shuttles to and from long-term parking, and saves time for you, the traveler. Talk about a frictionless travel experience…

Valeet also partners with rental car companies to have your rental valeted and waiting for you at your destination. They are even able to wash your car before it is returned to you, further enhancing the traveler experience.

Gone are the days of satellite lots and long lines at the rental car counter. Curbside car parking is the way of the future. The arrival experience should mirror the experience the airlines are trying to create once you arrive and this accomplishes exactly that!

Early Market Traction

This service is currently operational in 6 airports (4 US and 2 in Spain), and the team at Valeet are planning on expanding into Latin America and growing their current markets over the next year. They have parked approximately 10,000 cars in these six markets since their launch in July 2017.

Since Valeet’s launch in 2017, they have averaged 74% month-over-month revenue growth. Their current pricing structure ranges by city, but is generally between $20-$45 for the first day of parking, and then between $5-$20 for each subsequent day of storage. They have built relationships with long-term parking lots in order to accommodate the parking of vehicles. So far, the average length of car storage has been 5 days or $45 to $125 per customer.

In the future Valeet plans to continue to close deals with more long-term parking lots to reduce costs. They also are planning on raising the per day price of storage, as it was originally discounted as a means to acquire new customers in the early stages of the business. This is healthy traction and shows that the logistics of the business can work.

Why We Like it

1. Market Opportunity: The $3.5B US airport parking industry provides a large market opportunity for Valeet to pursue and optimize. Providing an Uber like experience at the airport can serve Valeet well as they meet the newfounded expectation of travelers looking for convenience when they come and go from the airport.
2. Product Differentiation: While many airports have their own valet services, Valeet aims to be present in a significant proportion of high-density airports. This streamlined service will be helpful to customers, because instead of having to use one service at their origin airport and a different one at their destination, they can just use Valeet.
3. Many of these airport valet services do not have the simple to use apps that Valeet is employing to schedule their valets. These airport valets are antiquated, along with being hard to access and to pay for. This is similar to the taxi industry, and how its antiquated nature allowed a streamlined business like Uber to come in and take over the market. Valeet aims to be the Uber of this market and overtake the out of date system of airport valet parking with their streamlined airport parking experience.
4. Scalability: Valeet has plenty of room to grow as it continues to push its way into new markets. Entering new airports should increase revenues, and there are still hundreds of airports for Valeet to enter. The sheer number of possible markets for Valeet make it easily scalable, along with the planned increase in prices and introduction of rental car valet. All of these factors will allow Valeet to have opportunities for growth for quite some time.The business model also caters to simple scalability. By winning one airport Valeet will be able to advertise the app and as a result will gain access to the broad customer base at that airport. Travelers coming through this airport will be able to see the value of it and drive adoption in their home markets. This will allow the opportunity for a clear mass distribution model.

The Founder

Carlos Jimenez is the CEO and founder of Valeet. Carlos has an extensive background in building and running startups, and has been a part of multiple ventures over the past 10 years. He has specialized in tech startups, much like Valeet.

His most recent position before the founding of Valeet was as the VP of Products at Ludei, a mobile-app and game development company. He has also worked in high level positions at several other tech startups, and has helped to grow these companies to profitability, such as Ludei and Trov Inc.

The team also includes Co-founder and CXO, Andrea Retamal. She previously has worked with Carlos at Trov Inc., and similarly has solid startup experience. As CXO, she is in charge of all operations related to user experience.

The Terms

Valeet is planning on using the capital from this raise to continue its expansion into new markets over the next year and to market their product in these new markets, as well as their existing ones.

This is not their first round of fundraising; the team at Valeet has already raised $2.5M from investors. Their first round of funding was in April of 2017. In this round $700,000 was raised from three individual investors and Plug and Play Spain, a VC firm.

A second round of funding occurred in December of 2017, and $1.8 million was raised. The two investors during that round were Aurorial and Plug and Play, VC firms. That capital has been used to build their apps and to begin to offer services in the six markets that they are currently in. In this round of fundraising Valeet is planning on raising a maximum of $2 million at a valuation cap of $9 million.

With a multi-billion dollar market opportunity and strong signs of product-market fit, we think the valuation is in line with startups at this stage. Mozio, which provides tools to make finding ground transport at airports seamless has raised $3.5M to date at a $12.5M valuation. Valeet is in line with this.