This team update was provided by Nick Miller, co-founder of Parking Panda and an organizer of the 2012 Baltimore Startup Weekend.

Parking Panda was born at the inaugural Baltimore Startup Weekend in April 2011. That weekend we were having a good time, building something we thought was cool, but never would have anticipated what it could turn into. Personally, I had a great job that I really enjoyed at a startup and attended Startup Weekend because I saw it as a great way to meet people and have a good time.

Fast forward more than a year and our weekend long project, Parking Panda, is our life.

For anyone who doesn’t know what Parking Panda actually does. Parking Panda is an online marketplace and optimization platform for parking. It enables parking owners and mangers (private and commercial) to capitalize on their parking inventory by driving extra traffic when yield is low and improving pricing when the lot is full. People in need of parking can save money and time by finding a place to park and paying right from their mobile phone or reserving a space in advance on the web.

When we created the company at Startup Weekend it was basically Airbnb but for parking. It has since evolved into a full-service online marketplace for parking as well as a platform where other companies (ie ticketing companies like MissionTix) can add parking to their own offerings.

Parking Panda is no longer just me and Adam (my co-founder and CTO). It is now a venture backed company that is constantly growing, we employ 7 people and continue to look for additional great talent, and are growing into cities across the country. If you told me at the time that Startup Weekend would be the impetus for me to quit my job and dedicate myself to my own startup I would have laughed; now I couldn’t be happier that I showed up that weekend to pitch my idea.

Check out their original pitch video from the 2011 Baltimore Startup Weekend.