Emerging parking companies find visibility, feedback, and community at the third annual Accelerate! competition.
By Jay Landers
Now in its third year, the Accelerate! Parking Pitch Competition has established itself as one of the signature events of the annual Parking Industry Expo (PIE). Held this past March in Dallas at the Hilton Anatole Hotel and Conference Center during PIE 2026, the competition brought together emerging parking companies to pitch their innovations before a panel of experienced industry judges and a room full of potential customers, partners, and peers.
Launched at PIE 2024 by Parking Today Media CEO and publisher Kevin Uhlenhaker, Accelerate! is designed to give newer companies and those introducing innovative technologies a platform to gain visibility, receive feedback from seasoned industry veterans, and connect with potential customers, all in one room. The 2026 edition drew five participants representing a diverse range of technologies and business models, from equipment diagnostics powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to gig-economy parking enforcement to waterless car washing.
This year’s judges were Peyton Gibbs, managing partner of Secured Payments; Juan Rodriguez, co-founder of Flash (see related story); George Baker, founder and managing partner of 2 the Moon Ventures; and Jim Saber, president and CEO of NextEnergy.
The competition’s first-place winner was Spot Parking, a Lehi, Utah-based automated parking enforcement company whose chief revenue officer, Cooper Young, delivered a pitch built on years of competition experience.
Second Place: Jon Sargent, On Spot Solutions/ATLAS
Jon Sargent founded On Spot Solutions, a Boston-based parking equipment field service company, in 2019. The product he brought to PIE 2026 was something new: ATLAS, a field intelligence platform designed to help parking facility operators and technicians diagnose and resolve equipment problems without waiting for a service call.
The idea grew from watching straightforward jobs consume far more time and money than they should once dispatch, travel, and invoicing were factored in.
ATLAS enables users to open a voice session, describe what they’re observing, and have the system guide them through a structured triage process based on real-world field service experience. Users can upload photos and videos, and the platform emails a full session transcript when the conversation concludes. “ATLAS is there to be that guide that steers you down the right path,” Sargent said.
When Sargent arrived in Dallas, ATLAS was still in beta testing. The Accelerate! competition gave him his first opportunity to present it publicly, and the judges’ questions caught him off guard in the best way. “Not a single question that came out of there was I prepared for,” he said. “Even though I prepared for a huge number of questions.” The experience clarified the competition’s value. Anyone releasing an innovative product or service for the parking industry “would benefit greatly by signing up for the Accelerate program,” he said. “Not just because of the exposure, but because of the opportunity to talk about your product in front of people who will have genuine, unique questions.”
Finishing second against competitors already generating revenue was, Sargent said, “a pretty big boost of confidence.”
Third Place: Tylar Miller, Taggr
Tylar Miller, CEO of Taggr and a veteran parking operator based in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, built his company around a simple insight: Parking enforcement is hard to staff and expensive to scale. Designed as a gig-economy platform, Taggr is “DoorDash for parking enforcement,” Miller said, connecting independent contractors, called taggers, with operators needing flexible enforcement coverage.
Taggers work on their own schedules through the Taggr app. When they identify a vehicle that has not paid for parking, taggers use either violation notices or the self-release parking enforcement device known as The Tire Tag, depending on the facility. Launched in October 2023 by Miller and his co-founder Emily Webb, Taggr now operates in 68 cities across 23 states with approximately 600 contractors at close to 300 locations.
Miller’s approach to the pitch was direct. “My whole goal was to make sure that [the judges], at the end of the conversation, understand what we do and the value that we bring,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to win anything other than new customers.” He would recommend Accelerate! without hesitation. “Absolutely,” Miller said. “I’m definitely going to tell people they need to do it.”
Fourth Place: Paulo Cumino, FlipWash
Paulo Cumino brought something no other Accelerate! participant could match: 150 franchise locations and more than a decade of operational history, just not in the United States. FlipWash, founded in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2014, is a waterless car wash service that operates inside parking garages. Using a proprietary process and a biodegradable wax, the company cleans vehicles with minimal water and no conventional wash infrastructure, generating additional revenue for operators while offering convenience to their customers.
Working with LAZ Parking and Reimagined Parking, Cumino has established U.S. locations in Miami; Austin, Texas; Fort Worth, Texas; and Dallas. More recently, FlipWash announced a new deal to operate inside the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin.
As the only non-technology company in the group, FlipWash drew particular curiosity from the judges. “Their vision was very important as feedback for what I’m doing,” Cumino said, “because sometimes I don’t know what the market is thinking about my company.” He left with a sharper sense of how U.S. industry insiders view his model, which he ultimately aims to translate into hundreds of locations across the country.
Fifth Place: Brock Watson, Park Easy
Brock Watson’s Park Easy, based in San Diego, is a realtime parking intelligence platform built on vehicle telematics. By combining sensor fusion with data transmitted by the vehicles themselves, the system captures rich, vehicle-native behavioral and contextual data across a facility, including how, when, and where individual and cohort drivers move, dwell, and return, without relying on traditional line-of-sight infrastructure. This gives operators continuous behavioral insight to run what-if scenarios and improve pricing, traffic management, space allocation, and strategic operational decisions.
Watson was candid about the company’s position. “We’re early, not only in our development and footprint, but in where the market is with connected vehicles and vehicle-to-infrastructure capabilities,” he said. Even so, Accelerate! still delivered meaningful exposure. “The Accelerate program gave us an introduction,” he said. “A lot of people stopped by the booth after to learn more.”
A Room Full of Winners
Beyond the rankings, Accelerate! generated something participants valued as much as the prize packages: community. Sargent noted that he and Miller had stayed closely in touch since Dallas, with Watson and Young also part of the ongoing conversation. “By giving us an opportunity to be in the same room with the same mission in mind,” Sargent said, it “really helps solidify that connection.”
Miller put it simply: “It was definitely a room full of winners that have something cool.”
Parking Today Media is currently accepting applications for the 2027 Accelerate! Parking Pitch Competition.
JAY LANDERS is the editor-in-chief of Parking Today. He can be reached at [email protected].
