AUSTIN, Texas — FLASH (or “the Company”), the leader in cloud parking software and mobility transformation, today announced a $250+ million strategic investment led by Vista Equity Partners (“Vista”), a leading global investment firm focused exclusively on enterprise software, data, and technology-enabled businesses. Vista is joined by existing lead investor L Catterton, other prior investors, and management. The minority investment will be used to expand FLASH’s mobility operating system and payments platform, extend digital services, and invest substantially in talent to support FLASH’s exceptional growth.
Launched in 2011, FLASH is the largest cloud-native parking technology platform and provides industry-leading digital and physical infrastructure. This platform creates seamless customer experiences and increases ROI while also connecting thousands of operators and asset owners with a real-time marketplace for digital mobility. FLASH’s operating system is the connective layer that transforms parking assets into multi-purpose mobility hubs where parking, charging, transportation, and logistics intersect with a smart city ecosystem. FLASH enables real estate owners, parking operators, and cities to tackle complex mobility issues such as congestion, lack of visibility into parking supply and demand, and fragmented consumer experiences.
Through integrations with most major automakers, entertainment and hospitality leaders, and every global mapping, navigation, and payment platform, FLASH connects its clients seamlessly with hundreds of millions of potential customers. As it continues its growth, FLASH will continue to help customers become leaders in the evolving future of mobility with solutions including electric vehicle charging stations, autonomous vehicle staging, and mobility-as-a-service.
“When FLASH was founded, the parking industry was poised for transformation and digital mobility platforms were nascent,” said Dan Sharplin, Chairman and CEO of FLASH. “We are rapidly future-proofing urban mobility infrastructure by providing an agile, cloud-based, mobile-first platform for the myriad opportunities facing cities, citizens, asset owners, utilities, and parking operators. We are thrilled to welcome Vista as an investor and partner whose expertise and experience will ensure we continue innovating to advance the connected mobility experience.”
Today, FLASH solutions are used at over 10,000 customer locations across all major U.S. cities and Canada, processing more than 11 million parkers per month and over $1 billion in annual transactions. The investment from Vista and L Catterton will accelerate its already significant growth by providing FLASH with the capital necessary to expand core and complementary product areas, provide world-class service to customers and partners, and build its best-in-class team with the expected hiring of over 200 employees in 2022 alone.
“FLASH has an incredible opportunity to continue its disruption of a massive industry,” said Marc Teillon, Co-Head of Vista’s Foundation Fund and Senior Managing Director. “We are excited to partner with Dan and the entire FLASH team as they innovate to advance the connected mobility experience.”
“FLASH’s visionary team is bringing best in class software and services to the parking ecosystem,” said Aaron Gupta, Senior Vice President at Vista. “We see massive growth opportunities for FLASH based on market dynamics such as accelerating digitization and the proliferation of connected and electric vehicles, and we believe they are strongly positioned to capitalize on the shift towards a more efficient and sustainable future for mobility.”
“L Catterton is honored to have been a part of FLASH’s remarkable growth over the past few years, and we are excited to welcome Marc, Aaron, and the rest of Vista’s exceptional team and capabilities into the Company,” said Matt Nugent, a Partner at L Catterton. “FLASH is uniquely positioned to facilitate a rapid and necessary evolution across the mobility landscape, to enable the growth of its many customers, and to provide a compelling, fully-digitized, seamless experience to millions of consumers. We look forward to partnering with Vista and the Company to help FLASH recognize its ambitious vision.”
On March 30th, FLASH will host its annual virtual customer conference, FLASHFuture’22, where company and industry leaders will preview technology trends and share winning strategies and consumer insights driving the parking and mobility ecosystem. Registration is open to all at flashparking.com.
Evercore acted as financial advisor to FLASH.
About FLASH
FLASH is the leader in urban mobility, helping businesses and cities rethink one of their most valuable assets: the parking space. Our award-winning cloud-born platform is configurable, secure, reliable, and grows alongside our customers’ business requirements as consumer expectations evolve. Founded in 2011 to perfect the parking experience, FLASH has grown to serve over 10,000 parking locations in every major US city, enabling traditional parking assets to transform into next-generation mobility hubs with future-ready hardware and software solutions, a powerful business intelligence engine, and a robust partner ecosystem.
Visit us at www.flashparking.com to learn more.
About Vista Equity Partners
Vista is a leading global investment firm with more than $86 billion in assets under management as of September 30, 2021. The firm exclusively invests in enterprise software, data and technology-enabled organizations across private equity, permanent capital, credit, and public equity strategies, bringing an approach that prioritizes creating enduring market value for the benefit of its global ecosystem of investors, companies, customers and employees. Vista’s investments are anchored by a sizable long-term capital base, experience in structuring technology-oriented transactions and proven, flexible management techniques that drive sustainable growth. Vista believes the transformative power of technology is the key to an even better future – a healthier planet, a smarter economy, a diverse and inclusive community and a broader path to prosperity. Further information is available at vistaequitypartners.com. Follow Vista on LinkedIn, @Vista Equity Partners, and on Twitter, @Vista_Equity.
About L Catterton
With more than $30 billion of equity capital across its fund strategies and 17 offices around the world, L Catterton is the largest global consumer-focused private equity firm. Leveraging deep category insight, operational excellence, and a broad strategic network of relationships, L Catterton’s team of nearly 200 investment and operating professionals support management teams around the world in building strong, category-leading brands. Since 1989, the firm has made approximately 250 investments in consumer businesses. For more information about L Catterton, please visit lcatterton.com.
