Ethan Glass ’19 has been recognized for the company he co-founded, Ocra, a centralized management platform that simplifies parking operations.
The Forbes 30 Under 30 list celebrates the brightest young entrepreneurs, leaders, and innovators across various industries. Ethan Glass, a Chicago native, was recognized in the Transportation & Mobility category, joining an elite group of changemakers shaping the future of business and technology.
“We appreciate the recognition by Forbes—it is a team honor that we share with the village of people that have helped us build this company,” says Glass, a Media Arts and Culture major and economics minor. “From the day we started the business we have been incredibly fortunate to receive immense support from friends, teammates, professors, and mentors at Oxy.”
Indeed, the company’s success has its origins on the Occidental College campus. At an entrepreneurship bootcamp that Glass led in 2018 through the student club Oxypreneurship, the notion of solving a parking problem was sparked. Mentored early on by Board of Trustees member Dave Berkus (who would eventually become one of Ocra’s first investors), Glass and team began their journey. Diana Keeler and Jeff Miller also offered important mentorship through the Oxypreneurship program, along with support from Daron Djerdian.
Like many entrepreneurial journeys, the original idea for the company has undergone massive transformation to become what Ocra is today. Initially, Glass and his teammates set out to build an online parking marketplace, which ultimately was unsuccessful. But Glass was focused on identifying an opportunity to add value to the South LA parking ecosystem.
He subleased an apartment in the area and stocked it with instant ramen and a futon. Then he walked the streets daily, volunteering to help local homes and surface lots sell their parking for events. Six months later, another key member of the Ocra team, Leo Connelly ’19, made his Ocra debut as a parking attendant (he is now a technical project manager for the company).
Glass’ vision for the company crystallized after arbitraging a bundled tailgating and parking event for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers official fan group. Glass considers this event to be a special memory as several of his Oxy classmates and soccer teammates, including Liam Walsh, Matt LaBriew, and Cameron Coe, showed up to support him.
After a few months of rapidly ramping up, the company was on the verge of expansion. However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, events screeched to a halt and Glass’s business model was shattered. He was forced to completely pivot the business once again.
As a next step, Glass and his team built a bot to reach out to nearly 3,000 parking professionals to learn about the industry and the challenges brought on by COVID-19. They uncovered a need to address a ubiquitous problem in parking: technology fragmentation, or silos between parking management technologies.
Glass and his team engineered cloud-based software that integrates and partners with widely-used consumer apps and websites for reserving parking, such as SpotHero and ParkWhiz. This allows parking operators and owners to manage inventory and pricing for multiple technologies within one platform.
Now Ocra’s software is used by more than 50 operator and asset owner partners at nearly 600 locations in North America. The company has raised around $5 million to date. They also provide managed services for online parking revenue, partnering with hotel owners and managers to increase net operating income by monetizing parking assets. MCR, the third-largest hotel owner-operator in North America, has generated more than $3.5 million in gross sales in partnership with Ocra.
Glass, an All-SCIAC athlete, credits the culture of the Occidental Men’s Soccer Team with how he is building the culture of Ocra.
“I was fortunate to be a part of the truly exceptional culture that [Coach] Rod Lafaurie built within the soccer team,” Glass says. “Several of the core values that Rod instilled in us are now a part of the core values of Ocra.”
These values—including integrity, communication, and empathy—guide how they lead and make decisions, and help them build trust within their team and the parking industry.
Other Oxy alumni are part of the Ocra story. Among the company’s early team members is Julian Chan ’20, and Esmé Brown ’19 is a recent addition. Glass says that Ocra will continue to invest in the Oxy community.
“Any Oxy students that want to get into entrepreneurship can reach out to us and ask whatever they'd like—whether it's about fundraising and venture capital or if it's how to build a business or solve a problem,” Glass says.” We are more than happy to help pay it forward.”
