As a student at UC Davis Mathew Magno struggled with the challenge of parking on a university campus. As part of an entrepreneurship course, he and his teammates came up with the idea for a parking app to help people find available parking spots. They did market research, customer validation, developed an MVP and went on to win the UC Davis Big Bang! competition in 2018. That early success motivated them to launch their startup JAPA, a platform that delivers real-time parking availability to drivers and enhanced parking analytics to parking lot owners/management.
In the short time since they launched they’ve won several pitch competitions, secured business partnerships and customers, and received early initial funding. They’re now a profitable enterprise and gaining a lot of traction and attention in the Sacramento startup scene.
Due to COVID-19 social distancing, Mathew and I connected on a Zoom call to hear the details of the origin story of JAPA, his creative MVP, early successes, lessons learned, how the COVID-19 crisis is affecting the startup, and more. Check out the interview in the video or audio podcast below.
I watched your interview and as usual soooo proud of you.., good person, hard-working student and very well focus on how to make little money to help Your needs to finish college.., work odd jobs and fixed computers for profit…
So pleased that your hard work ( and your partner , Charles Chen) in planning and starting Japa, Inc is a success! Inspite of all the hardships you both met on the way re: finances and time , since you were both undergraduates..Thank God , JAPA had won several business competitions at UC Davis’ Big Bang, prize money started the ball rolling, to be how JAPA is Now!! Continue to be patient, focus, knowledgeable, likable , and transparent…
Wishing you both and the Japa, Inc more success I the near future! Stay humble! God bless! Be safe.