eleven-x was founded in 2014.
Our mission is to make the world a better place by delivering smart parking solutions which enable cities and communities to be accessible, safe, resilient, and sustainable.
Our values are:
- Teamwork: We believe in the power of the team and commitment to making eleven-x great.
- Diversity: We respect each individual and what they bring to the team.
- Customer-centric: Our success comes from being customer-centric and making every interaction with eleven-x a great one.
- Excellence: We deliver excellence with a bias for action, continuous improvement, and learning.
- Accountability: We own and are accountable for the decisions we make.
- Joy and celebration: We celebrate our wins, big and small.
Tell us about yourself?
I’m the proud father of two daughters and happily married to my amazing wife. I’m an avid sailor and play a bit of guitar.
With respect to work, I’ve been in the tech industry since the mid-80s, starting at IBM and then as a founding member of the management team at Celestica, one of the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturers. I then built a fabless semiconductor and patent licensing business as SVP & GM at MOSAID Technologies, a Canadian public technology company, before leaving to lead several technology startups.
After that, I spent over a decade helping startup founders, first as the leader of Communitech’s Venture Services group and then as a founding partner of the IAF, one of Canada’s most successful seed-stage investment funds. I then took on a role as General Partner in Stand-up Ventures, a Toronto-based, seed-stage venture capital fund focused on investing in women–led technology ventures.
My previous experience has led me to eleven-x, with a primary goal being to create a company that will truly benefit the communities we live in. Creating eXactpark, a product that is revolutionizing parking, has a huge effect on the operational efficiency of our communities, has a major influence on the quality of life for residents and visitors, provides a significant impact on economic development, and drives significant reduction in GHG emission s, making our communities more sustainable.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
To build a successful business, I’ve often said that you need to meet the “four T’s”: You need to build the right Team, choose the right Technology, generate significant Traction, and hit the right market Timing, with Timing being the most difficult to get right since it is largely external forces that drive this. I’ve always been confident that we have the first three T’s looked after. I think if I could go back in time, I’d let myself know that in 2023 we’d hit the bullseye for market timing and that we are well-positioned as the market leader in this space.
What problem does your business solve?
Simply put, we make sure that anyone can find a parking spot anytime, anywhere they want to. This results in many benefits for our communities, including reducing the 30 per cent per cent of traffic caused by people looking for parking, reducing the one in five traffic accidents caused by people looking for parking, and reducing vehicle-related GHG emissions by 30 per cent which equates to 430,000 metric tons of CO2 daily on a global basis. eleven-x exists to improve livability in our communities by providing an efficient, fully integrated, all-in-one smart parking solution.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Parking is something that almost everyone has experience with, and it’s generally a negative experience. Having the ability to change this negative experience into a positive experience is incredibly inspiring. And to be able to simultaneously make our communities more sustainable and more inclusive adds to that inspiration.
What is your magic sauce?
The only way to deliver on the promise of making parking a delightful experience and to deliver on the promise of improving quality of life while making our communities more sustainable is to have real-time data on parking stall availability readily available. And the only way to do this is to have a highly accurate, cost-effective, reliable, battery-operated sensor in every parking stall. eleven-x’s patented stall sensor is eXactly that and is the foundation of our award-winning eXactpark smart parking solution. At the end of the day, our team and dedication to outstanding customer service are what really make us stand out from other smart parking companies. Of course, having a great product is one thing, but backing it up with the industry’s only 10-year warranty and outstanding customer service makes our solution even more compelling in the eyes of our customers. But the real magic in all of the use cases that eXactpark enables, including real-time stall status, actionable analytics guidance and wayfinding, curbside management, dynamic pricing, and intelligent enforcement.
What is the plan for the next 5 years?
We’re passionate about our vision: Parking is a daily frustration. We make it better. We dream of a world where parking is a delightful experience for everyone.
Our goal for the next five years is to make our vision a reality in every community across North America. Continuing to focus on building a high-performance tea will be a key prerequisite to accomplish this and is one of our most significant accomplishments to date and one of our most important focus areas.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
I mentioned the “four T’s” earlier. We made very solid choices in terms of building our Team and the Technologies we chose. We also had great Traction with customers from the very beginning. But one thing that you can’t control is market Timing. We knew that we were developing a great product and that eXactpark was going to be a winning solution in the market. The only question was when the market Timing would be right. And that time is now.
How can people get involved?
If you’re a municipality or campus looking to improve driver experience while also optimizing your parking assets, please contact us through our website at www.eleven-x.com/contact/.