As ubiquitous as trolleys or Spanish moss, parking tickets and the receiving thereof have become an inevitable part of any visit to downtown Savannah. A new local startup called Quickit is trying to rectify that with the help of a smartphone app.
The company is the brainchild of Steven Hall and Tristan Steele, both former insurance salesmen, who had an idea to make one of life’s nuisances a little less of one.
Their original concept was for a subscription-based website called Driver Save Club to pay off minor traffic violations, but they soon discovered how complicated paying a fine can be.
“As a result of starting that company, we realized the process of paying for traffic tickets is really archaic and primitive,” Hall said. “We just knew there had to be a better way to solve that problem.”
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n September, the duo enrolled in an investor readiness course held by local nonprofit The Creative Coast to flesh out their idea. From there, the duo made a significant pivot as they decided that paying parking tickets would be much easier using an app.
“We learned through that course we needed to focus on that technology because that would be a much more viable and scalable business model to try to raise money on,” Hall said.
And so it was. During their first pitch to investors at a local conference in mid October, Steele and Hall used a deadpan style of humor that caught the audience’s attention.
“It was not scripted,” Hall said. “We like humor — we’re salespeople — but any time we tried to incorporate humor, it never worked, so that was just a natural result.”
After the pitch, the two were approached by local entrepreneur and angel investor Clegg Ivey about potential funding. Ivey is one of the co-founders of the Guild Hall, a new collaborative space geared toward designers, coders and gamers.
In November, Quickit closed its initial round of seed funding with Forge(X), a startup incubator located within Guild Hall, for
an undisclosed but substantial six-figure sum, according to Hall.
After seeing their initial pitch, Ivey said, he researched the duo and was impressed that they had already launched a company, which convinced him to make an investment.
“You can’t hear the idea for this app and not wish that it already existed,” Ivey said. “That’s really what Forge(X) is all about – taking people that have a great idea and are passionate and ready to take it to the next level, and that’s why we were so excited about them.”
As part of their deal, Hall and Steele will be setting up shop inside the Guild Hall at 518 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and will have a team of coders and developers on hand to help build their first mobile platform.
The technology behind their proposed native app would be similar to other mobile payment systems. An example they used during their pitch was of a ticket printed with a QR code, which could then be scanned like a bar code using a phone’s camera.
Once scanned, a payment screen pops up, allowing the person to check out instantly. This would not only ease the burden on the driver, said Steele, but also the cities and universities collecting these revenues.
While doing research on parking systems, Steele and Hall met earlier this year with Sean Brandon, head of management services for Savannah, to learn more about the city’s collection process.
Brandon said Savannah’s collection rate is actually pretty high at 80 percent, but trying to collect on delinquent tickets can become costly.
“For delinquent fines, we have a whole staff we hire that has to physically go out and find those people,” Brandon said. “Our costs compared to if the person paid up front is much higher.”
He cited Boston as having recently implemented its own mobile parking payment system using an app created by a startup there called TicketZen. Brandon said he could potentially see a similar system working in Savannah.
“We would take a look at it if and when it makes it through the development process,” he said.
Beside municipalities, Hall and Steele said, they believe Quickit would be marketable to many local and regional universities whose collection rates are typically much lower.
“Our goal is to revolutionize the way that not only governments and universities collect on parking ticket revenue but also the way the consumer pays and communicates with them,” Steele said.
Steele and Hall, who hail from Valdosta, have quit their day jobs to oversee the startup’s development, a step they both describe as terrifying and exhilarating.
“Quitting and doing this full time is a passion, but it’s a leap of faith,” Steele said.
“It’s going to be the most exciting, most scary, most fun ride of your life,” Hall said.
For more information on the company, go to www.thequickitapp.com.