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He added AI to parking lots—then raised $3.5B. | Alex Israel, Founder of Metropolis
Season 4 Episode 94
Alex and his co-founders spent 2018 pitching parking lot owners on computer vision tech. Every meeting ended the same way: "Cute startup, come back in 30 years."
So they did something else—they bought the parking operators and implemented the AI themselves. VCs called them delusional. But today, Metropolis has 20 million members and adds 1 million new members every month. Every 1-2 seconds someone signs up.
Alex's biggest lesson? When enterprise customers won't adopt your tech, don't convince them—buy them. Sometimes the only way to disrupt an industry is to become the industry.
Why You Should Listen:
- The "growth buyout" playbook—buy old companies to force your tech
- Why adding friction made their product better
- The counter-intuitive metric: success = less time users spend in your product
- Why VCs said "absolutely not" to their best strategic move
Keywords:
startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, Metropolis, Alex Israel, computer vision, growth buyout, parking technology, M&A strategy, enterprise sales, B2B SaaS
00:00:00 Intro
00:03:05 Seeing the parking opportunity
00:06:37 The original vision
00:12:33 Raising $7.5M and leasing the first two parking lots
00:16:04 First customer transaction
00:22:58 The growth buyout strategy
00:27:54 Acquiring SP Plus with 23,000 employees
00:34:32 Building beyond parking
Send me a message to let me know what you think!
Published on 8 hours ago