Ten years ago, two college students from Mexico hacked a vending machine at Geekdom. This year their venture hit a milestone of major success.
ParLevel, a startup that creates tools to make smart vending machines and points of sale, has reportedly sold for tens of millions of dollars.ParLevel Systems, founded 10 years ago by two recent college graduates with a rent-free office at Geekdom, sold earlier this summer to 365 Retail Markets in a deal worth tens of millions of dollars, according to a ParLevel investor.
The sale signals a success for Geekdom in particular, which since 2011 has sought to create a pipeline for startups that carries them from idea conception to the sale of a mature enterprise. Longo said ParLevel’s success confirms the hypothesis he and Weston had when they began Geekdom, which combines a co-working space in the Rand Building on Houston Street with accelerator and incubator programs. “We had the gut feeling that if you took a bunch of people and put them in one space, they would make great stuff,” Longo said. “And that’s what happened.”
Gonzalez and Teele did not win. Their idea was “not very good,” Longo said — he recalled it was a fitness dance app — but their energy and drive were apparent. So he offered them a rent-free office at Geekdom for a year,Inspiration came one day from a vending machine in the building.