YouSaid · the spoken record

Mark Lawrence

lines on the record: 83
first: 2025-03-10
most recent: 2025-03-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I mean, I think there's a value to consistency. Something to be said for focus. Our focus, consistent focus. You go through the history of the company, every aspect, all these potential distractions or things to spread ourselves too thin or things that could have killed us sooner. Our focus on just one thing and one thing very, very well has contributed. Yes, of course there's always luck. And I do believe in luck, but I also believe in manifesting it. And I think that consistency and focus has been key across everything.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say we are the largest. Like, we have 1,600 parking companies that we partner with. And when you look at the sales that we're doing, usually it's greater than all the others combined. I started this. With the idea of how do I stop getting parking tickets and love to drive hate to park. I'm actually loving to park a lot more now. And I'm just absolutely jazzed about like what we could accomplish, right? To me, it's focused on executing how do we change the moments of people's days, right? How do you make it so people don't even have to think about parking?”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is part of it, but the other part, too, there was a time where people were worried about public transit, regardless of the different servicing issues in different cities. People just felt safer in their cars. And we ultimately obviously had a snapback and we ended up hiring a lot of folks that we unfortunately had to let go. And they're still with us, which is great.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, public transit, you're used to the routine. You go in five days a week, you always take the train. You're coming in two days a week, one day a week, and you're driving.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I mean, we have fully recovered it more. Right now, we are three and a half times larger now than we were pre-COVID. And there's a number of different factors for that. But there is actually a greater percentage of people driving in parking.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Voice automation, like, you know, you name it. And I'm like. Wait, I have to decide between paying for some software to some stranger that I don't even need to use because of some contract. And then I got a fire somebody else. Someone is going to lose their livelihood because of this. I'm like, absolutely not.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was just an absolute brutal set of decisions to having to lay off close to 70% of the company. But it made it easier to be brutal externally, right?”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two, three weeks later, I'm like, oh man, and I remind them, I said, well, it wasn't an existential threat to parking. It was an existential threat to everyone. But yeah, it was two or three weeks later. And that was by far the hardest time that we as a company had to go through. I mean, brutal, brutal.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I remember right before COVID, we had a board meeting in February, early February. And, you know, it was a kickoff to the year, and I gave a bit of a preamble every year in the company. We had an existential threat to parking and spot hero. And I went through everyone for every year just to remind people of what we had transcended and come through. And I said, and this is the first time that we sit here today without an existential threat to Spotty and parking, I am reminded by the board constantly about the words that I should eat because obviously COVID happened. And I always”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, obviously, it's my fault I didn't keep in touch with investors or give updates. I'm very good about that now. But let's take series A, right? The idea every day in the media, Uber and Lyft is saying parking is dead. The future is no car ownership, but everybody Ubering and Lyft everywhere, right? Then it was, okay, parking is not dead. It's the future. And everybody is, car ownership is great, but valaying those cars is the future and it's not you. Than it was actually sorry about that. It's not labor that's going to scale this industry. The cars are going to drive themselves and they're going to be in perpetual motion. And so they don't ever need to park. And I'm just like, come on. Can we get a break? We've never been like what I would call on trend, right? Like we've never been this like on theme type company for a race.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And That meant that together the overlap was so low, there's literally going to be 5%, maybe 10% overlap. And that was a really great acquisition. I'm really happy we did that.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, well, our strategy was. We went to all these places to hide so that you wouldn't compete with us, to grow our revenue. And I said, where? And I'm looking at, and I'm like, you're doing how much in Sacramento?”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What was interesting though with parking panda is they basically decided they're like we're selling and so it was interesting because they were actually the number two at the time they were the second largest at the time and we were the first and there was a moment where I wasn't sure if I wanted to buy them and you're kind of cagey because you're like if I give too much to my competitor then and they don't buy me then they know my secrets so to speak but if you don't give enough then it's not interesting and I was asking them like I'm like I need to see more detailed revenue by city and they were so cagey they showed me a breakout and I was like why are you like he's like I'm gonna turn the computer I'm like why are you so afraid like remember if we're gonna do this together like we need to understand like where not just your P&L but like where are you doing revenue”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were doing our series B. We're trying to raise $20 million, which at the time, that was a pretty sizable series B in 2015.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know exactly what you're talking about. I mean, whether it's recency bias or whatever you want to call it, the idea of what is right in front of me is exactly how it is now and how it always will be is definitely not the case. And it was certainly not the case with on-demand valet.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, these are the hottest companies. This is where it's at. And this is where half a billion dollars from dozens and dozens of the top Silicon Valley firms are putting their money.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was definitely extraordinarily stressful for so many reasons. And me questioning myself and thinking, okay, I remember when different parking companies would tell me nobody is going to buy parking on a telephone. Hey, this internet stuff is a fad. And laughing at how ridiculous the things were that they were saying and remembering them saying, listen, I've been in parking for 57 years. I've been in parking for 37 years, 50 years, 40 years, right? What do you know? And I remember thinking, well, I've been in parking for, you know, five years. And then thinking, wait, am I being just like that?”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, but the findings were pretty clear. And the discussion was, okay, well, then why are they able to get such mindshare? They're like, if this is going to be the thing, we need to make sure that we are also part of that thing. If it is not the thing, okay, fine. But they have how much more money than us in terms of capital. How long can they be irrational? And what are we going to do to survive this? We're shut out of parking spots. Our cost of customer acquisition is everything is blowing up. Like, what are we going to do in order to survive this and get to the other side?”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The valley's coming in 72 days because the algorithm was like, well, there's this many valets and there's this many people pressing the button. And so it did some crazy calculations, right? And people like 72 days, I need my car now, right? And so, you know, tested this in New York and Chicago, and it just did not work. And I presented to the board the findings.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It made absolutely no sense you had to pay for humans parking the car. But here's the other thing there was a thesis that, well, if you park the car farther away, you can get an arbitrage, and especially in New York City, could be $100 to park in a specific area, but it's only $15 over. But the problem is that as you get farther and farther away to get lower and lower parking, the amount of time it takes to bring the car there and back increases. So your labor costs go up. So for a consumer's standpoint, when it launched on San Francisco, everyone was like, wow, I pressed a button. Had a valet come in two minutes. And it felt like Uber. Okay, but then fast forward. And, you know, there was people screenshot”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was more of like hey, all in favor of pivoting the company. It's very clear this is where things are going. And I'm like, all right, well, you know, that's great. But it was very clear this was definitely not going to work.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So they were, you know, our average was like $20 to park. So they made it where it's 15, but they would valet your car both ways. So the consumer experience was quote unquote remarkable. Like, wow, I can just press a button and my car gets picked up wherever I'm at and then dropped off and brought back to me. It sounded amazing on paper. And there was actually a vote to pivot the company to be on demand valet”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Extremely, I mean, totally subsidizing. And we were, you pay 15 or $20 to park and you park your car yourself. They also had to pay for labor.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Their logos were all over the place. Everybody knew who they were because they were spending crazy amounts of money. The other thing is our cost of customer acquisition were exploding because they were just paying unlimited. And so cost of acquiring customers were going up. They were also prepaying for six months or a year to shut us out completely of, you know, some great locations.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, this was quite possibly one of the most stressful periods that we had experienced to date. We had worse ones later, but to date, that was enormously stressful because Not only had we raised $7 million, but these companies had raised forty, fifty, sixty, seventy-seven million dollars, Lux, Zerks, Vatler, Carbon. And they were also extremely visible with the umbrellas and the skateboards. And I remember a board meeting where I was told, hey, Mark, you are going slow. We've been telling you going slow. You're not expanding fast enough. And now there's this new model. And it looks like you guys are dead. You're being disrupted before you have the chance to disrupt. Half a billion dollars went to fund companies that said we were the relic. And meetings in the valley were extremely demoralizing because people would say, hey, like, you know, I've heard great things about you. Clearly, like.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was extraordinarily intimidating, and I didn't want. To expand to San Francisco because of that. And Bullpen Capital, who coaled our round, you know, their view was you're not raising a Series B and you're not going to be taken seriously if you're not in San Francisco. But I feared expanding to San Francisco the most.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, we have to pay payroll. We have to pay operators in two days. And I don't see enough money in the account. And I'm like, oh, well, there's other accounts. Like, don't worry. And I didn't know when the wires would actually hit. And one of the bigger wires, I was asked, hey, I've got a delay for a couple weeks because of some capital calls, some VCs. They're going on vacation. You don't mind waiting a couple weeks, right? In my head, I'm like, well, if I tell them no, they're going to be like, why are you out of money? Right. So I said, fine. Luckily, we were able to get a wire on the day that we had to pay payroll. And so it was fine. But, you know, very hard.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not very popular. Now, wow, we have a burn. We're running out of money. But we did have some investors that did step up. You know, co-led the round with Chicago ventures, bullpen capital, and Mike Gampson. But it was really... It was really hard round. This was May. If we didn't have that first wire, we would have been out of business, right? It got to a point, and I never lie, but I lied once. And it was to our accountant, Stephanie. And I remember she came to me and said, hey, I'm looking at the bank account. When is the round going to be done? I said, why? She said, well, because we have money coming due.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Investors, no way. They were not lining up. Not only were they not lining up, and our traction was good but not great. And it was slightly interesting, but not interesting enough. I didn't keep in contact with the investors.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they could work with Parking Panda and us. So, some were exclusive, some were not, but they could work with both. But the way that we communicated was different. All the other companies were trying to get exclusives. And our strategy was like, we don't want exclusive. We want to prove to you that we can bring more dollars than anybody else. Here are references from Chicago, from people in your company, some they know, some they don't. And they work with three, four, five, six, seven, eight players. And we bring more than all of them combined. And we want to do that here. In addition, we were the first to have anytime parking on a website. And then we were the first that had an app. The first to iOS, we were the first to Android, and the focus of being only in two markets allowed us to really leapfrog parking pandemic.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was a company called Parking Panda. Parking Panda had the largest concentration in both DC and Baltimore. They had started around the same time as us.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's interesting because I wasn't thinking so much I know better as. I really fear going to another market. Right. Like, you know, so it was like. Like they would try to elicit the fear of losing, but the fear of expanding was greater.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Investors were very skeptical, you know, feeling like, hey, the trajectory in one city is not interesting. The idea of what Spothero could be nationwide and then worldwide is exciting. And people are eating your lunch everywhere”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I was told, Mark, it's just coincidence. And I'm like, coincidence, really? And so we had our back and forth different sign wars. So it was a slog. But the real thing is we focused all of our efforts in one city. And because all of our efforts are concentrated there, dollars, focus, operation, relationships, every aspect, we could react quickly. We could make changes quickly. We could iterate. We had much closer attention to the details. Our response time was extremely fast because we don't have 20, 50, 100 cities. We have one city.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was hand to hand combat slog like you could not imagine. Like, you know, I remember having a conversation with one of the CEOs at the time of a rival parking online company. And I said, you know, it's interesting. All of my signs disappeared and your signs were put in their place. We had a hundred of them and they all disappeared.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The number one key thing for why we beat them all of the folks in Chicago is we were only in Chicago. Everyone else was distracted with all these other cities. Even the companies based in Chicago, they were focused outside of Chicago”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I definitely was because I saw that happen to a lot of different companies. They expanded and they got tanked. And I'm like, man, if I'm in these different cities, I'm not going to be able to have the same level of care. And the whole thing could come down. So there was definitely a worry of spreading myself too thin. We also didn't have the same resources as all these other companies. Right.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An enormous amount of money. And it was very stressful to see all of these pins pop up in different places that, you know, while we were just in Chicago. And we were called a one-hit wonder. Hey, you've got one city. It's really great. Where are you going next?”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I would say there was a lot of pressure. Why are you just in Chicago if you're not in these other markets? You're not relevant. Uber was also launching and Lyft. And there was this whole idea of blitz scaling and moving fast, making sure that the land grab didn't happen by somebody else. And my point of view was the park industry is more about relationships. At the time, you know, 60, 70 percent of the dollar spent in parking were cash. It was a very... Old school group of folks that had set ways of doing things. And this idea that you can just throw money at a problem didn't work with an industry that was really about relationships and trust.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the friction points because if you think about it, we've talked about, okay, there's the parking operators and there's the drivers, right? There's the parking spots, spaces, and drivers. But the third leg of the stool is the point of sale systems or parks, which help enable that consumer experience. And so it's not just as simple as getting the spots on the driver. So working out the different kinks, understanding each detail that's needed by the different partners, right? Like there were also folks in the garage that we could talk with and understand what's happening. How does this work?”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And the idea was can we create a model that we can then bring and scale to other cities? And so our expansion, we were the only, like, because, you know, we started all these different competitors pop up. And many were in 10, 20, 50, 150, 200 cities. We were only in one city. And our focus was can we Really get a true playbook for this business in a single market and then go to our next market.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, like everybody. But that was kind of like why we initially said no. And I thought about it after the conversation. And I remember I was sitting. By myself in the car. Everyone was like, You should negotiate, you should do this, and like, no, you should say no, you guys are already doing 80,000 a month. And I remember just thinking, I'm like, okay, what is the best possible outcome if I say yes to this? And what's the worst possible outcome? And thinking through those different scenarios, it became clear like, okay, I want to do this.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say yes. I mean, I know how beneficial, you know, joining Techstar Chicago is now. I didn't at the time, but I remember thinking when we raised, like, we're like, we raised $50,000. Like it just felt so good. And I'm like, we did it. It took a year, almost a year and a half to hit $1,000 of sales in a month. Which meant like we're taking home, what, like, you know, 150 bucks. But I remember in 2012, sales ramped in, you know, January, February, March, April, May from $5,000 a month to $80,000 a month in May. But the worry was, is this going to last? And so we were kind of scared to hire someone, and that $50,000 gave us the confidence to make our first hire.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm doing our SEO and our pay-per-click. I'm like right now, I'm like, look, I'm missing customer service calls. They need me. And I can't answer the phone because I'm here in this meeting with you. And I was told, well, you could hire someone if you thought about hiring anyone. And I'm like, hiring anyone. It's like never thought, you know, like it's been a year and a half. I'm like, I didn't realize you could do that. It just wasn't a thought.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was interesting because we all weren't sure if we want to do it. And myself, Larry, and Jeremy talked, and we actually decided no. And ultimately sat for a few hours talking to them about pros and cons and like what we're going through and conversations like you said I have to be in all these meetings, meaning all these different people. I'm like, I don't have time for anything. I'm going door to door. I'm having meetings to get parking spots.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know it was, but I was so... Like, excited at the time to be in San Francisco, to have just been in the room at a Y combinator interview, I felt it also clarified a lot of things for the business just by actually filling out the application. You know, because of the experience, I was so excited to apply to other ones and did all these interviews and kept getting turned down. And then I remember we got in, they accepted us into Techstar Chicago.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the interview was interesting, but it didn't go well off the bat. And the key reason they said no was because they didn't believe that we knew Larry long enough. And they were like, it's a huge risk to have two business founders and a technical co-founder of which was such a new relationship.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And we ultimately were able to get, you know, these different garages on board from three of the largest parking companies in the country.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You could scan a printout, or you could scan it from a phone And so dependent on the equipment, but that was the first, actually, that was one of the first garages that we got the equipment in.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and again, in hindsight, it seems obvious. But at the time, I'm like goal, get spots for Bears games. We have zero. Harlan has these spots. And he's like, hey, let me show you this future vision of parking. And he was telling us about a problem that he was solving that we didn't have because we didn't experience it. We never sold parking in a garage. And so ultimately at that location, the park connect from Harlan stuff was put there and you could scan to get out.”
2025-03-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · SpotHero: Mark Lawrence · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT