Game day parking is a dreaded three-word phrase for fans of Florida State University (FSU) athletics, including students, faculty, alumni and guests. Now, a new app called DIBS Parking, co-developed by Seminole alumnus Osher Steel, may ease some of the gameday parking headaches.
The app is a simple and user-friendly two-sided platform, similar to Airbnb. If a user is looking for event parking, they can create an account, select their event location and set priorities such as 24/7 security, walkability, accessibility to leave quickly or price. DIBS then connects them with available listings in the area.
Homeowners can also register in the app by creating an account, taking pictures of their lot, adding a description including an address and linking it to nearby event venues. Once completed, they are connected with the nearby event locations (no further than a 30-minute walk, or approximately a mile) and can begin listing for upcoming events.
While the app is still fairly young, having launched in Miami in March 2025, bookings continue to grow and hosts are typically booked the weekend or week before events. The platform has since expanded to Jacksonville and Tallahassee, Fla.
During the last two home football games, DIBS Parking had 50 spots available within a 20-minute walk of Doak S. Campbell Stadium, offering competitive pricing compared to on-campus lots.
“The service that we want to give is a service where we can take the stress out of parking, especially for game days, when it can be very chaotic,” Steel said to the FSView.
Many have read headlines of fans falling victim to parking scams. DIBS aims to alleviate some of the worry by providing documented transactions and receipts to hold both parties accountable.
DIBS Parking is a passion project of Steel and his longtime friend and co-founder, Willy Merlet. The duo brings programming backgrounds: Steel holds a bachelor’s in computer science from FSU and Merlet is a software engineer.
The idea had been sitting with the Miami native for a while. During a trip in 2019, while visiting his uncle in Israel, his family used a similar app to park in someone’s driveway on their trip downtown, a notoriously busy area.
“It was easy to book in advance, so that kind of lit a light bulb in my head,” Steel said. “I just love the idea of optimizing space rather than having to build more parking infrastructure and ugly parking garages.”
At the time, Steel was still in high school and set aside the idea. However, it resurfaced in a product innovation course at FSU, where he presented it as part of the class. At that point, he envisioned investing in a similar company rather than developing it himself. Post-grad, unable to find the right career fit, Steel transitioned to pursuing his entrepreneurial endeavors.
“At the time, [Merlet and I] were just kind of like, ‘oh, that wouldn’t be that hard to build, we could just do it on the side,’” Steel said. “We hyped ourselves up, did a little bit of market research … aggregated a bunch of reviews for specific venues and people are always complaining about parking … So we decided this is worth building and that’s kind of where it started.”
The pair began working on the app in September 2024 and launched it on mobile app stores six months later. The first event they serviced was Formula 1 in Miami in May 2025. Given that both are from Miami, it was a natural step to launch in the bustling event epicenter.
Operations have expanded to include legal counsel, designers and a social media curator who is also an FSU alum.
The platform is now up and running and allows Steel and Merlet to add new locations. They hope to expand to the rest of Florida and are already taking steps towards Orlando, Tampa and Gainesville.
Evolving from a class project at FSU to a growing parking platform, DIBS Parking exemplifies how innovation and persistence can create simple solutions to recurring problems. This is only the start for the app.
“It’s incredibly fulfilling to create a project that is yours and to be able to see a problem that is happening and being able to solve it, just for that aspect, I would encourage other students to do it,” Steel said. “But also, don’t be scared to go into the unknown and start something that you don’t know a lot about…give yourself the skills to be able to pursue it and when the opportunity arises, you’ll be able to take it on.”
Kani Schram is a Senior Staff Writer for the FSView & Florida Flambeau, the student-run, independent online news service for the FSU community. Email our staff at contact@fsview.com.
This article originally appeared on FSU News: DIBS on parking: FSU alum launches app to ease gameday stress
Reporting by Kani Schram, Senior Staff Writer / FSU News
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