Underrepresented entrepreneurs often face daunting challenges to get their startups off the ground. If you’re looking to learn by example, a great place to start is Founders Unfound. Initially started by Dan Kihanya, a serial entrepreneur, the site tells the stories of startup founders of African descent. Kihanya records an hour-long podcast at least once a month that showcases a new startup and its founder. One of Kihanya’s most interesting interviews is with Jim Gibbs, the co-founder and CEO of Meter Feeder, a startup that predicts parking availability and lets vehicles pay for parking with no human interaction.
Having grown up on Long Island, New York, Jim credits much of his success to parents that sacrificed much to nurture his talents in science and coding. All the hard work paid off, with Jim attending Carnegie Mellon and getting an internship at the Brookhaven national laboratory. He then did software development work for large companies, like USA Today and America Eagle. That time also fostered his love of Pittsburgh, where he currently resides and where he intends to build the next billion-dollar tech company.
“I may be from all the way out on Long Island, but then I came to Pittsburgh in ’95 when I attended Carnegie Mellon. Once I was here, I found out I could get a two-bedroom apartment for 500 bucks a month,” he says. “So essentially, I came out here for artificial intelligence and just stayed for the rent.”
While attending university, Jim took a variety of jobs to make ends meet. His stories span work as a receptionist, entry-level JavaScript developer, and he even performed as a street dancer. But even after college, he felt like there was a large gap between the kinds of jobs he could get.
“I went and tried to get a job and I had two different resumes,” he says. “One was ‘Hey, my name is Jim and I type 70 words a minute,’ and the other one was, ‘Hi, my name is Jim and I know assembly, C++, so on and so forth.'”
The Rise of Meter Feeder
Like many Founders Unfound origin stories, Meter Feeder’s start came out of left field. Jim and co-founder Dan Lopretto had lunch with a salesperson from another startup to discuss ways they might be able to help. But when lunch ended and everyone dug into their pockets to pay their share of the check, the salesperson’s hand came out of her purse clutching a “fistful of parking tickets.”
“She said, if you guys made an app to pay for parking, I would use it every day,” Gibbs recalls. The idea remained with the two men and they built the first framework as part of a local hackathon, which they won. After that, the project was picked up by Y Combinator and Meter Feeder was officially born. Jim’s long-term vision for Meter Feeder is to simplify parking for both individuals and municipalities.
The software loads as a mobile app on your smartphone and then monitors your location using GPS. You can then pay for whatever parking you need by entering your license plate, a credit card, or a digital payment method like Google Pay. In municipalities that support Meter Feeder, the app will know what price zone you’re parking in so payment is immediate. You can also set the app to automatically pay if you need your time extended. No pocket change, no running back and forth between the meter and wherever you actually need to be.
It might seem like a niche application when viewed simply through the lens of individuals paying for local parking, but Meter Feeder also benefits much larger clients. According to Gibbs, companies with large car and truck fleets, such as rental car companies, large repair truck fleets, or behemoth delivery services like FedEx, have made parking tickets a $100 billion per year market. A solution like Meter Feeder can not only save these companies boatloads of cash, but it can also raise revenue for municipalities since more vehicles will be in parking compliance and payments will happen smoothly.
Building a Startup
When it comes to getting his company off the ground, Jim recounts several challenges, but he’s also quick to mention that he overcame them. In his experience, raising venture money as a Black entrepreneur today is largely because it’s in vogue at the moment. “It actually wasn’t until recently that Black people were considered a part of diversity,” he says. “Only now that people are realizing that Black people have a hard time raising money are folks actually looking at me as someone who might be on to something.”
But in Gibbs’ mind, overcoming his challenges is less of a priority than paying it forward. If he can make Meter Feeder a true venture success by garnering the significant profits that early investors are looking for, then maybe those same investors will give the next generation of Black tech entrepreneurs a chance.
“I’ve consistently been faced with doubt,” says Gibbs, “so I see it as my job to make sure that the next group of folks don’t have to go through the same thing that I had to go through.”
For more on Gibbs’ journey towards realizing Meter Feeder, check out the interview on Founders Unfound.
