During his days as a student at North Carolina A&T, Robert Wilson was victim to the pains of parking on a college campus. Scouring for spots each time he arrived on campus was getting exhausting, and one day after resorting to an off-campus lot, he was 20 minutes late to an engineering quiz and locked out of class.
Wilson knew a solution was needed, and through a survey process he identified about 750 commuters at N.C. A&T with the same pain points. Together with his eventual Co-Founder Troy Blaylock, he found that many commuters waited more than 20 minutes before finding a parking space. Others reported waiting for up to two hours.
Determined to address the problem, Wilson and Blaylock designed 
a platform that would help commuters find parking and provide parking administrators with analytics.
“I wanted to be the change that I believed in,” Wilson said. “I didn’t see anything in the market that was similar.”
Cary-based Parking Pin is part of NC IDEA’s MICRO grant cycle, which gives $10,000 project-based grants to early-stage startups. Wilson said he plans to use the grant money to continue with product development and beta testing. (We’ve previously covered other recipients from this cohort, including Kahmino, Artificially Digital, Blockchain Power and Theralinq.)
The startup’s initial target customers are university administrators, but Wilson said they eventually hope to expand to hospitals, airports, stadiums or anywhere else parking analytics might be needed. Parking administrators will pay for annual subscriptions to access the software, and the product will then be free to use for their clients, who are the commuters.
“We’re a one-stop shop,” Wilson said.
Parking Pin has a dual system, with a web dashboard for parking administrators and a mobile application for commuters. After subscribing to Parking Pin, the administrators are responsible for getting their clients—the commuters—on board with the platform.
Using the app, commuters can see the capacity of different parking lots from an aerial perspective. From there, thanks to a partnership Parking Pin has set up with Google Maps, the app facilitates easy navigation to a desired, available parking location.
“As commuters, we’ll circle around a lot, and we’ll just hope that a parking space will magically appear,” Wilson said.
There are additional perks as well. For instance, commuters can access any parking permits they may need within the app. And those who are concerned for the environment will appreciate the notion that routing directly to an available spot, rather than driving around searching for one, will cut down on emissions.
Benefits For Administrators
Parking Pin is also designed to give parking administrators their time back. Wilson said these employees often spend large portions of their days circling campus or development lots, which he describes as “mundane” and “archaic.”
Some lots have devices installed to monitor cars, such as sensors embedded in the ground or license plate readers, but these solutions are costly due to the need for large quantities of hardware.
By contrast, Parking Pin’s software analyzes all the lots on a development’s campus, assesses the hotspot congestion, and generates a report for parking administrators. The software approach is also easier to implement.
“The great thing about our product is that because we’re a virtual solution, we can get started tomorrow,” Wilson said.
Parking insights are offered on demand in real time, allowing parking administrators to work from the comfort of the office. For example, if there is a prohibited vehicle in a certain lot, a notification will be sent to the administrators, who can then can conduct a field observation.
Working from the office can also help ensure employee safety and satisfaction. Wilson has heard from parking administrators that employees circling lots have passed out on hot days. And in colder climates, below-freezing temperatures can also put employees at risk.
Wilson said he hopes to continue developing the software to produce traffic forecasts and identify locations where additional parking is needed. He expects to launch the product sometime in Q3 of this year and invites anyone with interest in Parking Pin to reach out to him at robert.wilson@parkingpinllc.com.
