From Parking Problem to PropTech Pioneer
Even a minor conflict was enough to spark a business idea: Mateusz Wojdylo wanted to pay only for the days he actually parked in a Zurich office building. “I was simply too stingy to pay for a whole month of parking space,” the founder recalls with a smile. Rather than accepting the rigid monthly rate, he proposed a deal to the building owner: he would programme a digital solution that bills parking to the minute — and once his prototype was ready, she was welcome to continue using it. The landlady found the idea sceptical and interesting —after few months Wojdylo got it to work. Shortly afterwards, a second interested party expressed interest and that sparked idea in his head that it can bi next big scalable thing. He had solved a problem that was evidently shared by many.
The Person Behind Stellos
Mateusz Wojdylo, born in 1985, is a tech entrepreneur of Polish origin based in Zurich. He has already founded several software companies and has two successful exits behind him. In 2020 he launched the startup “Share.P” (today Stellos AG) to tackle the parking problem he had experienced himself. His guiding principle: if you see a problem passionately enough and approach it technically knowing that someone will be will ing to pay for it, that is the best recipe for a sucess. Wojdylo pooled his savings, initial MVP, help from some collogues and put everything on one card in the truest sense of his founding motto “Carpe Diem”.
Today he emphasises that he “put his worldly possessions on the line” — trusting that he was not alone with the problem. Indeed, finding a parking space in Swiss cities is a massive issue. A 2014 study by the Touring Club Switzerland shows: nowhere else in Europe are there as few managed parking spaces as in Switzerland — only around 84 spaces per 1,000 vehicles. Many Swiss residents have no private parking space and often spend a long time searching for gaps in public spaces. This costs nerves and money: the Mobilitätsakademie estimates that every driver in German cities spends an average of 41 hours per year searching for parking spaces, costing around 896 euros per vehicle annually. These facts alone make it clear that Wojdylo’s eureka moment was no isolated case: almost half of all inner-city traffic is generated solely by people searching for parking spaces. In this situation, his hack — pay only for what you actually park — appeared to many as a long-overdue innovation.
The Genesis of the Idea
From that simple conversation with the landlady, a vision developed: could the business model of parking space be fundamentally rethought? Wojdylo immediately saw the need: every large building complex has hundreds or thousands of parking spaces, mostly with contractually fixed monthly rents — a rigid system, particularly in the commercial and residential property sector. “We discovered something that the vast majority had accepted, even though it causes problems for all of us — a kind of ‘Stockholm Syndrome of parking’, so to speak,” he describes the situation. While many simply put up with this imbalance, Wojdylo was like “an outsider” who did not know that it was supposedly “unsolvable”. He drew on his knowledge from previous IT projects and typed out prototypes while building contacts in the real estate industry.
Initial conversations with further property owners and building managers confirmed: they all faced the same dilemma. Everyone could see the advantages of a flexible system, but no one had yet provided the impetus. After two landlords had approved his pilot project in Zurich, he was already speaking of a scalable business model that could be implemented “anywhere in the world”.
The Solution: Smart Parking Space Management
From the prototype grew a digital ecosystem: today the company operates as Stellos AG (formerly ShareP). Its platform combines hardware and software into a holistic “smart parking” system used to manage the parking portfolio assets offering in it multiple applications. At its core is admin panel management with over 8 different aplications with over 280 functionalities working autonomously: users reserve their parking space via the system, automatically get access based on the booking credentials, and pay only for the time actually used. On the technical side, plug and play access technology and artificial intelligence come into play: cameras recognize number plates, digital parking permits for employees or tradespeople are issued via software, and charging points for electric vehicles are integrated. With these technical building blocks, Stellos automates all processes, access control, billing, booking and analytics, making parking spaces more transparent than ever before. According to company data, this reduces operating costs by up to 70% and increases revenues by over 100%, in the same time dicresing the cost of the parking for the employes and reducing the traffic around the building.
Stellos addresses several user groups: property owners who want to understand better the parking spaces and utilize them better, facility managers who wish to minimize administrative burdens, and municipalities that can intelligently manage a portion of parking spaces for the public good. A further pillar is the charging of electric vehicles: the platform not only optimises traditional parking spaces but also prepares the infrastructure for e-mobility. In this way, the founders also aim to solve future challenges from big-data analyses of traffic flow to CO₂-optimised parking strategies.
Market and Environment
The driving force behind the idea is a global mega-trend: ever-larger cities, ever-more vehicles and barely any additional space. In Europe, private parking spaces are increasingly being made publicly available, for example through sharing platforms or intelligent management systems. In Switzerland, the pressure is growing as almost no new areas are being added. Politically, topics such as energy efficiency and traffic relief are at the forefront according to the TCS, up to a third of inner-city traffic is generated solely by the search for parking spaces. With its solution, Stellos thus strikes a nerve: it promises less traffic, fewer emissions and more flexible use of space including help in the on-street parking elimination.
At the same time, the real estate industry is investing increasingly in technology. PropTech startups are more in demand than ever; in Switzerland, organisations such as the Urban Land Institute (ULI) or SwissPropTech bundle networks to promote innovation. Stellos (then ShareP) successfully participated in the PropTech Innovation Challenge 2023: as the only Swiss finalist, it prevailed against other European startups in Zurich. ULI PIC Champion Livia Boer praised the concept: “ShareP opens up new pools of public parking spaces and thereby revolutionises parking in cities in a way that benefits all parties involved.”
Such awards increase visibility and credibility: cities, associations and corporations get to know the technology and build trust. For founder Wojdylo, it is the way to meet the right contacts such as building managers, parking space managers or facility decision-makers who then drive the solution forward within their organisations. The real estate sector is strongly networked; companies convene in associations such as ULI Switzerland or SwissPropTech, and it is precisely there that Stellos seeks attention. According to Wojdylo, there is no “unbeatable firewall” against new solutions the difference is made by persuasion.
Challenges and Development
The path was not easy, however. The real estate industry operates differently from the digitally-minded startup scene: it requires patience, trust and reference customers. “We are not building an AI business, but a long-term, cash-generating company,” Wojdylo emphasises. Investors therefore also need to take a long-term view. The technology had to go through many maturation cycles before major clients gave their approval. In his words, it took around three years until the right situation arose the moment when a major operator reported a pressing need and deployed Stellos as the solution. Only then did the snowball effect begin: once a leading company accepts the platform, competitors and partners often follow suit.
In the interim, Stellos benefited from PR in trade media and at industry events. Instead of placing conventional advertising, interviews about the project were published and talks were given at conferences. Participation in competitions (such as the aforementioned ULI PIC) brought media attention to the front pages, which, in conjunction with industry events, opened additional doors. In Switzerland, for example, the annual ULI meeting or the SwissPropTech industry evening is considered a mandatory appointment: those who are not present there are quickly regarded as outsiders.
From an operational perspective too, the team learned quickly. In the early phase, Stellos had fewer features (cost-based billing, app control); in the meantime the platform has grown to be “enterprise-ready”. Decision-makers today expect not only individual solutions but a complete modular toolkit. Stellos has therefore developed modules for user management, ERP integration, reporting and an open interface for all common systems. Only when car park operators, companies and municipalities accept the all-round package does a young system achieve lasting success.
Outlook
After five years of development and growth steps, Stellos can now reap the fruits of its “persistent commitment”. The company now participates in the Innosuisse Scale-up Programme and received the coveted Innosuisse certificate in 2025. This signals that the business model is solid and can continue to scale. “Now it is about spreading the physical AI network across cities and portfolios,” Wojdylo comments on the next steps.
The vision remains ambitious: Stellos aims to become the standard builder for digital parking space management. This means expanding globally and addressing further markets. The founders changed the name from ShareP to Stellos at the turn of 2025 as an indication of the new dimension (Greek: stello = “to bring, to send”). From 2026 onwards, Stellos is intended to no longer merely “share” parking spaces, but to digitalise the entire asset management of real estate. In this way, building and traffic planners should in future automatically know how to dynamically manage parking space without requiring people to react manually.
Even today, industry insiders know: when a new parking problem arises in a city, Stellos is often asked for. According to the founder, up to 70% of inner-city traffic could be avoided through efficient parking space management alone. This is precisely what Stellos intends to build upon. With comprehensive solutions for parking space, the company will continue to grow in the coming years.
For property owners and cities, the startup founder’s patience could pay off: data-driven parking space management promises not only less frustration for drivers, but also greater transparency and sustainability for traffic planning. And so the circle closes: from a small personal annoyance, an industry-wide innovation has emerged. Solving the parking problem — that remains the mission of Stellos.
Sources:
- Statistics and industry figures are drawn from studies by the Touring Club Switzerland and the ULI PropTech Report. Background information on the startup and quotes from founder Wojdylo as well as awards have been taken from relevant press releases and media reports.