PRESS RELEASE: Parksy.com Rebuilds the Driveway-Sharing Feature With AI That Got Its Founder Told Off by a Mayor in 2012
Parksy (parksy.com) is bringing back the feature that made it briefly famous. Previously known as parkingmadeeasy.com.au in August 2012, a Western Australian mayor publicly told the young Sydney startup its users could not rent out their own driveways, and the resulting “you can’t park here” fight ran across the Fairfax mastheads, breakfast television and talkback radio. Brisbane’s council warned of a black market in car spaces. Perth’s threatened crackdowns. The startup kept going anyway.
Fourteen years later the sharing economy won the argument, and Parksy is relaunching the idea at the centre of it with AI and a Friend Finder, a rebuilt version of the neighbour-to-neighbour matching that started everything. It connects a driver who needs a regular spot with a local who has one going spare — a driveway, a garage, the concrete strip beside the house — and lets the two of them sort it out directly. Listing is free, searching is free, and Parksy takes no commission and asks for no lease paperwork, the same terms it defended in 2012.
Founder Daniel Battaglia remembers the mayor fondly. “Being told to stop was the best marketing we never paid for. Every council that called driveway-sharing a black market was really saying the same thing: this works, people want it, and nobody official thought of it first. The idea was never the problem. The paperwork people kept trying to staple to it was.”
The relaunch lands in a different Australia. More than 13,000 spaces are now listed on Parksy across the country, commuter parking at the big stations fills before eight, and a spare driveway near a train line has become the most quietly useful asset on the street. Friend Finder’s job is to make the introduction a neighbourly one rather than a commercial one — closer to lending a ladder than signing a tenancy.
Owners can list a space in a few minutes at https://www.parksy.com/rent-your-space-free, and drivers can start looking at the friend finder feature once logged into the app or website, which connects the contacts they have with who they might already know on the platform.
“We were twelve years early and one mayor short of a licence,” Battaglia said. “This time nobody is telling anyone they can’t park here.”
About Parksy
Parksy (parksy.com) is a free, commission-free parking marketplace operating across 57 countries. Drivers use Parksy to find and book parking, appeal unfair fines with a free AI-powered calculator, scan confusing signage, locate a parked car, and report accidents — all at no cost and with no signup required for most tools. Space owners list and rent out driveways, garages and unused spots for free, with no commission and no lease paperwork. Parksy was founded in 2011 by Daniel Battaglia and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.
Media Contact:
Daniel Battaglia
Founder & CEO, Parksy
parksy.com | [email protected]
linkedin.com/in/danielmbattaglia/
Previously: Lehman Brothers, RBC Capital Markets, Macquarie Bank
Author: Parking Made Easy — Making Life Easier
