HopStop users type addresses, landmarks or businesses into origin and destination fields. Based on criteria set by the user, the site determines the quickest and most convenient pathway through New York's expansive mass transit system.
As founder of HopStop.com, Nigerian native Chinedu Echeruo has been helping New Yorkers navigate the city’s overwhelming mass transit system since 2005. Eager to improve its mapping tools, Apple Inc. recently acquired the popular online city transit guide, Bloomberg reports.
Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet confirmed the deal in a statement to ABC News: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”
While terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed, Google recently purchased Israeli mapping start-up Waze for $1.1 billion.
His own difficulties traversing through New York City while working on Wall Street inspired Echeruo to create a technological solution. Nearly 10 years later, the free mobile application and website HopStop.com assists travelers by guiding them to subway stations and bus stops in more than 300 cities worldwide, including London, San Francisco, Paris and Toronto.
“Every entrepreneur starts off thinking ‘What’s a problem I can fix?’ he told The New York Times. “The problem for me was how to get from Point A to Point B in New York.”
Hailed as Black Enterprise’s 2007 Small Business Innovator of the Year and listed in the magazine’s Top 40 Under 40 list, the serial entrepreneur also founded Tripology.com, a U.S.-based Internet company, in 2010. Prior to his launching a successful technology career, the 39-year-old attended Syracuse University and Harvard Business School. He then continued on to work for several years at J.P. Morgan Chase in the Mergers & Acquisitions and Leveraged groups.
Now a partner in a private equity firm in Accra, Ghana, Echeruo has set his sights on Africa, where he intends to put his solution-based innovation to good use.
“My idea is to essentially have one place where a budding entrepreneur can access a template for starting a business, and then customize it to suit their own situation; essentially, a business-in-a-box,” he said in a 2012 TED Talk.
“There is no reason why every entrepreneur should have to reinvent the wheel every single time in all the countries in Africa.”
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Apple Buys Chinedu Echeruo’s HopStop.com For A $1 Billion
Apple has acquired Chinedu Echeruo’s HopStop.com, The Wall Street Journal’s publication, AllThingsDigital reports. Founded in 2005, HopStop.com makes mobile applications for both iOS and Android that covers over 300 cities and that helps people get directions or find nearby subway stations and bus stops. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed as at the time of this publication.
Chinedu Echeruo, formerly an analyst at investment banks and hedge funds founded HopStop in 2005. Echeruo is now Chairman of the Board for HopStop.
HopStop has oft been compared to Israel’s Waze which was recently acquired by Google for $1 billion. The move is seen as Apple’s plan to bolster its map offering especially given Google’s recent acquisition of Waze.
A serial entrepreneur, Chinedu Echeruo grew up in Eastern Nigeria and attended Kings College, Lagos. He attended Syracuse University and the Harvard Business School in the United States and founded HopStop.com after working for several years in the Mergers & Acquisitions and Leveraged Finance groups of J.P Morgan Chase where he was involved in a broad range of M&A, Financing and Private Equity transactions. He also worked at AM Investment Partners, a $500 million volatility-driven convertible bond arbitrage hedge fund.
He founded and raised nearly $8 million for his two U.S based internet companies; Hopstop.com andTripology.com. Tripology.com was acquired in 2010 by American travel and navigation information company, Rand McNally. He was named Black Enterprise Magazine’s Small Business Innovator of the year and listed in the magazine’s Top 40 under 40 and is currently a partner and head of the Principal Investing group at Constant Capital, a West Africa based investment bank.
True to form, Echeruo is working on yet another venture but this time, focused on small businesses in Africa. Check out a video of Chinedu Echeruo below at last year’s TedxIkoyi where he talks about his latest project for small businesses in Africa; “crowd sourced business in a box.”
According to him:
“There is no reason why every entrepreneur should have to reinvent the wheel every single time in all the countries in Africa. My idea is to essentially to have one place where a budding entrepreneur can access a template for starting a business, and then customize it to suit their own situation. Essentially a business-in-a-box.”